Hymn to St Cecilia (Repost)

Didst thou thy God not hymn and psalm,

O blessed Virgin Martyr dear?

Alone in death with Christ, in calm

Thou didst not turn from purest prayer.

Sing out with radiant Spirits loud

The praise of Christ thy God and Lord!

His strength in thee did shame the proud,

When scorning death thy life outpoured.

How blest thou singest now inspired,

In heav'nly chorus virginal!

Live now with Christ in God, enchoired,

In fairest realm celestial!  

O spouse of Christ Who died for thee,

Maid slain for Him by cruellest sword,

O fame of Rome, fair Cecily,

Teach us to hymn th' Eternal Word.

In Him, God's Son, through Him, our King,

With gladdened hearts from sin set free,

By Light Divine may we e'er sing

As she did to God's Majesty:

Thou Might and Crown of saints above,

True Source of life, Blest Trinity,

Grant us the grace to praise Thy love

In heav'n with her eternally.  Amen.

(My own composition.)

I prefer to sing this to M.-A. Charpentier's tune for the Veni Creator, H.69 (transposed down from its original setting for high soprano).

Thursday Afternoon in Rome

I was very tired, and my time in the Eternal City was fast passing away...

In the mid-afternoon, I slowly walked down across one of the Tiber bridges into Trastevere, stopt for a Belgian beer, then found the ancient basilica of Santa Cecilia.

It brought me to my knees, seeing the beautiful sculpture of that Virgin Martyr - a statue copied from her incorrupt body, which was discovered, and displayed to all Rome, for almost the whole of 1599 (at least thirteen hundred years after her death in witness to Christ). To think that her body still sleeps in the reliquary of the crypt below (which I viewed through a grille), together with several other early martyrs!

The mosaic of the apse is of the ninth century, and in its ancientry and naive style breathes the pristine spirit of holiness. Pope Paschal (who then rebuilt the church, even then falling into ruin by reason of the centuries having elapsed since its foundation) is pictured with St Cecilia, SS Peter and Paul, Our Lord, St Valerian (the chaste husband of Cecilia, and fellow martyr), and St Agnes (another primitive Virgin-Martyr). Below, there is a procession of sheep (Christians) approaching the Lamb of God.

******

I then walked further down the Tiber, crossed over on the Ponte Sublico (?) and made my way toward Santa Sabina - but first, and very fittingly, found the property of the Knights of St John (whose estate is the smallest sovereign state in the world, they having previously lost Jerusalem and then Rhodes to the Turks, and Malta to Napoleon), where, looking through the keyhole of their gate, one espies a perfect prospect of the dome of St Peter's at the end of a beautiful path hedged about by vegetation.

******

Santa Sabina, HQ of the Dominicans...

Well, let's just say it was very Dominican - let the reader understand!

The church is very bare and sober, in antique Roman style: excellent. I finally got around to reading Lauds. But then, the advertised bookshop being closed because the person manning it "just popped out for a minute", I sat down and read several more Hours, till finally they got the message and found some Pole to open it up.

I bought a number of interesting items, such as small reproductions of works of Fra Angelico, and best of all (E15.50) a mint-condition 1956 Dominican Diurnal, in perfect pocket-book size. It was so well-preserved the pages needed carefully to be separated, so as to read it.

But... the Polish fellow had put on what turned out to be an excruciatingly corny and heterodox CD of mad US Dominicans, singing wicked propaganda - for instance, one song said, If your image of God is an old man on a cloud, discard it because it doesn't exist and it is a symptom of your fears and repressions... Need I say more? Oh, and there was the expected feminist revisionist angle represented as well. Puke, puke, puke!

I went back into the basilica to finish off the Hours through to Vespers - and found an even more bizarre thing. I was moving round from the altar of St Hyacinth, when I noticed a friar I'd seen earlier doing something odd at the Bl Sacrament altar: to my consternation, he had the tabernacle open, revealing a mini-monstrance (before which he had lit several tiny candles, commendably enough), but had pulled a chair right up onto the altar step, and was lounging on this, with his bare feet stretched out in front against the altar, and his hands on his head!

I honestly didn't know whether to cry or laugh, it was so hysterically eccentric and peculiar. Talk about giving scandal. And then, his mobile phone rang, so he just walked away from Our Lord and took a long, loud telephone call right in the middle of the church. Eventually he returned, only for his phone to ring again and him to abandon his wierd adoration for a second conversation...

For the benefit of posterity, I have acquired a photograph of this madness, which I will upload once I'm back in Australia. I think even Coo-ees couldn't come up with a strange thing like this.

******

Well, I missed seeing St Paul's outside the Walls, and many other churches (including several, like San Stefano Rotondo and San Clemente, that are quite close to where I've been staying), but I have done much... till next time.

Gaudeamus

The Last Sunday after Pentecost - Pre-Advent Sunday, "Stir up Sunday" - is upon us; to-night also marks Vespers of St Cecilia, dear to me because I sang them with my old schola over a decade ago; and I have spent a very pleasant evening with a friend, who tells me that during the past week he has been privately received into the Church.  Deo gratias.

A quirky resonance: the second antiphon for Lauds and Vespers of St Cecilia (Lauds I've prayed, Vespers will instead be the first of Sunday), with its striking ascending incipit, refers to her sainted husband, Valerian, who "in the bedroom found Cecilia praying with an Angel", upon which event he converted!

(Valerian, along with Tiburtius and Maximus, is commemorated on the 14th of April, the feast of St Justin Martyr.)

Since my friend comes from an Anglican background, he does hope, as we may, that such actions as the ongoing discussions between the TAC and Rome will issue perhaps in permission for former Anglicans to utilize appropriate elements of their liturgical heritage within the Catholic fold, much as has already been done in the United States under the Pastoral Provision, providing an Anglican Use with its own Book of Divine Worship.  Lest any critique this, it must be said at once that the Novus Ordo could be greatly improved in its ethos by a larger injection of the best features of the High Church tradition, such as better singing, better preaching, and more attention to liturgical best practice...

During our spiritual conversation, he let me know that he feels at peace, after what has been a long process; I was reminded of some words from that golden book, The Imitation of Christ, which I mentioned to him and now post here for the benefit of us all:

I am accustomed to visit my elect in two ways: by temptation and by consolation.  (III, iii, 5)

Therefore, when God gives you spiritual consolation, receive it with thanksgiving; but reflect that it is a gift of God, not your merit.  ...become more humble in this gift; also more cautious and fearful in all your actions; because this hour will pass away and temptation will follow.  When consolation will be taken away from you, do not despair immediately; but with humility and patience wait for another heavenly visit, because God is potent in redonating you a greater consolation.  (II, ix, 4)

À Kempis goes on to observe that this state of affairs is known to all the Saints and Prophets, and gives an exegesis of Psalm 29 with this in mind (II, ix, 4-5).

Mass for St Cecily's Day

After a lazy Saturday, including reading The Weekend Australian over coffee, on the spur of the moment I decided I really ought hear Mass...

As I'd slept in after a tiring week at work, I had perforce to motor over to the Redemptorist Monastery, as they have a Saturday Mass (not a Sunday Vigil, Deo gratias) after their afternoon Perpetual Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.  I entered their church at the very moment that Benediction was being given! - so I flopped to my knees literally on the doormat, and received that mysterious Eucharistic Blessing imparted by the priest.  While the congregation sang the concluding hymn to Our Mother of Perpetual Succour, I knelt at her altar before her sacred image (as the words suggest)...

Mass was to begin almost immediately: I hied myself over to the front pew, and buried my head in my St Andrew's Missal, from which I read to myself the whole text of the Traditional Mass - giving the occasional response in Latin sotto voce (so as to avoid giving scandal).  I did receive under both kinds, as this is indeed a great and most amazing blessing, and there can be no sin (as some silly Traddies seem oddly to imply) but rather great grace in what has been lawfully conceded by Holy Mother Church.

I had been struck earlier on, when looking at the proper of the Mass for St Cecilia, by the great number of chants - for example, to-day's Gradual and Offertory - taken from that great epithalamium, Psalm 44, which is read (like the Canticle of Canticles) as referring to the spiritual union between Christ and the Church, His mother, and each Christian soul.  More on that later...

St Cecily's Mass is made up, as often the case with early martyrs, from various chants and other pieces: the Introit, Gospel, Offertory and Communion are from the 1st Common Mass of a Virgin Martyr; the Epistle and Postcommunion from the 2nd Mass of a Virgin Martyr; the Alleluia (matching the Gospel) comes from the Mass of St Agnes (21st January); the Collect, from the Octave Mass of St Agnes (28th January), changing Agnetis to Cæciliæ, and strangely omitting quæsumus; only the Gradual and the Secret have I not so far tracked down.

Hymn to St Cecilia

Didst thou thy God not hymn and psalm,
O blessed Virgin Martyr dear?

Alone in death with Christ, in calm

Thou didst not turn from purest prayer.

Sing out with radiant Spirits loud

The praise of Christ thy God and Lord!

His strength in thee did shame the proud,

When scorning death thy life outpoured.

How blest thou singest now inspired,

In heav'nly chorus virginal!

Live now with Christ in God, enchoired,

In fairest realm celestial!  

O spouse of Christ Who died for thee,

Maid slain for Him by cruellest sword,

O fame of Rome, fair Cecily,

Teach us to hymn th' Eternal Word.

In Him, God's Son, throough Him, our King,

With gladdened hearts from sin set free,

By Light Divine may we e'er sing

As she did to God's Majesty:

Thou Might and Crown of saints above,

True Source of life, Blest Trinity,

Grant us the grace to praise Thy love

In heav'n with her eternally.  Amen.

(My own composition.)