Yesterday, I posted two articles on the Easter Vigil: one on the glory of observing the Vigil on the night of Holy Saturday, and another on that great hymn which attests to its nocturnal character (for the deacon sings the phrase "this is the night" five times), the Exultet. Today, I bring to you a glimpse of a unique tradition that developed in southern Italy: the proclaiming of the Exultet by means of an illuminated scroll.
By the 10th century, the scroll, as a means of putting words down to posterity, fell out of fashion in favor of a handy little invention called the book. But today, we have 28 surviving, magnificently decorated scrolls from places in Italy such as Benevento and Salerno that attest to their persisting use on the holiest night of the year. What's more remarkable is that the scrolls are designed to be read vertically. Those who are familiar with the Torah scrolls still used in the synagogue know that a scroll is typically read horizontally, whether right-to-left or left-to-right. We can tell from the Exultet scrolls' structure, and some of the artworks themselves, that their holy pictures were meant to be seen by the lay faithful as the deacon sang the hymn.
There appears to have been two methods to show the scroll off to the laity. In the first, the text and neumes (the notes for the chant) were written one way, and the pictures were illustrated upside-down. The deacon sang the Exultet from the pulpit facing the people, and as he unraveled the scroll, it spilled down the face of the pulpit with the pictures correctly oriented so that the laity could see the story of salvation unfold before their eyes; quite useful in an era when the Exultet was sung in Latin to an illiterate mass.
Singing from the pulpit, or ambo
In the second method, the neumes and pictures both faced the same way. This required two deacons: one stood below the pulpit with the people, facing the same direction. The other stood at the pulpit, unraveling the scroll so that the deacon below could sing it from bottom to top.
Singing with the people below (note the two candlebearers helping the deacon below to see)
In yesterday's article, I alluded to the Exultet's role as an ode to the bees which produced the wax for the Paschal candle. Many of these scrolls appropriately have entire scenes devoted to the bees. See below:
Of course, this looks more like a horror scene than a moving religious image. All I can think of is that scene in The Wicker Man where Nicholas Cage's character is eaten alive by bees.
Below, we have the beginning of an Exultet scroll where we can easily see how the text is upside-down.
Even if we might find reading medieval script difficult, we can see that the illuminated initials are on the right.
Is the art of the Exultet scroll lost forever? So far, I've found two modern nods to this tradition on the world wide web. The first is a recreation I came across on someone's Flickr album. You can find the album here, but I'll also share a couple of images directly below. The artist began it in 2006 and the page notes that only a quarter of the text was done at the time. I wonder if she ever finished it.
The last item I found is not a scroll at all, but an attempt to bring the illuminative tradition back to the Exultet in the form of a book. I imagine that, where the Exultet is sung today, it's usually sung from a simple binder of sheet music. A few years ago, a deacon and iconographer in Alaska, awed by the Exultet scrolls of medieval Italy, set to work on illuminating a book from which to sing the hymn. The product is now for sale from under the title The Illuminated Easter Proclamation for $70 on Amazon. The version used is the revised English text for the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. It has 28 Byzantine-style icons throughout. Of course, since this is a book, the faithful can't see them during the liturgy itself, but the icons are also sold on a CD (here) which, I suppose, could be used to print them out onto bulletins which can be distributed to the congregation.
I've shared the first icon below: Jonah being swallowed by the whale.
Not the most obvious choice for us today, but the medieval would have remembered how Jonah had to spend three days in the darkness of the whale's belly; a foreshadowing of Christ's rest in the tomb.
All articles in my Holy Week 2015 series, short and long
One of the most spectacular rites of the Easter Vigil is the singing, traditionally by the deacon, of one very long prose called the Exultet before the Paschal Candle. While you read this entry, I invite you to listen to it below as it was sung at the "Anglican Use" parish church of Our Lady of the Atonement, where I attended the Vigil of Easter last Saturday night. The church uses a beautiful translation into hieratic English, which you may follow along with in a new tab here.
The Exultet is sung between the 3:45 and 15:50 marks
There are so many beautiful expressions of hope and rejoicing: consider the felix culpa, the "happy fault" of Adam's sin, that brought mankind to a greater good through Christ, the "blessed iniquity, for whose redemption such a price was paid by such a Saviour". And let's not forget the bees! The Exultet "waxes" poetic on the Paschal candle as the fruit of bees' labor; a creature that the medievals believed reproduced asexually and, therefore, were virgins. "For wax that melteth doth but feed the flame, for thereunto have God's creatures the bees brought it forth, that it should give light in darkness." The version we have in the Roman Rite today is much abbreviated from older versions, such as the one found on the Exultet scroll of Salerno, whose praise of the bees ends with:
"O truly blessed and wondrous bee, whose sex the males do not dishonor, the bearing of offspring does not violate them, nor do (the bearing of) children destroy their chastity. Just as the holy virgin Mary conceived and bore a child and yet remained a virgin."
I've long decided that if I were to be ordained a deacon some day in the future, I'd earnestly hope I would find some church that would allow me to sing it in the full, traditional tone every year.
Unfortunately, as a friend pointed out to me a few months ago the truth of Ecclesiastes 1:15; that is, "The perverse are hard to be corrected, and the number of fools is infinite". About half of all discussions on the Internet about the traditional Latin Exultet are conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church worshipping Satan. If you have the stomach for it, proceed to videos such as this expose of a recent Easter Vigil Mass at Saint Peter's Basilica. Or webpages such as this. (I hope you have your antacid pills at the ready.)
In the Latin version of the text, as it appears in the reformed Missal and which is sung by the deacon at Saint Peter's in those videos circulated by the conspiracy theorist hacks, it goes:
"Flammas eius lúcifer matutínus invéniat: ille, inquam, lúcifer, qui nescit occásum. Christus Fílius tuus, qui, regréssus ab ínferis, humáno géneri serénus illúxit, et vivit et regnat in sæcula sæculórum."
As you may know, the word Lucifer literally means "lightbearer" (lux for light, ferre for "to bear" or "to carry"). The ancients typically associated this word with Venus, the Morning-star.... and it also happens to be a name traditionally assigned to the adversary, Satan. Here's the official translation of the Latin phrase I posted above:
"May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star: the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who, coming back from death's domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen."
To anyone with a modicum of common sense, not to menton those who have actually attended the ceremony and followed along with the text, the deacon is clearly singing about Jesus Christ. The conspiracy theorists are quick to accuse the hymn of enthroning Satan as messiah in place of Jesus, as Catholics have always apparently been wont to do since Saint Peter's day. Strangely, these accusers, who are probably all Protestants claiming to be speaking the Biblical truth, are unaware that Scripture itself calls Jesus the morning star:
"I, Jesus, have sent Mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." (Revelation 22:16, King James Version)
The traditional text of the Exultet is a little subtler, but the message is the same. Christ is the light in the darkness, who brings us out of the gloom of the Crucifixion into the everlasting day of the Resurrection.
For those who want to see the full Latin text, this page has both the 1962 version and the revised ending for the current rite (the "1975") with a slightly different translation than the one I first linked you to side-by-side.
The Exultet sung at Our Lady of the Atonement, San Antonio, 2015
I end today's entry with another treasure: a translation of the Exultet used in Sarum. The rubric has the deacon sing it facing north at a point in between the quire and the altar. As far as I can tell, the text is the same as in the classical Roman Rite, with one little exception: along with the pope and the local bishop, it also prays for the king by name. (The king was also prayed for by name in the Canon of the Sarum Mass.) The tradition of praying for the ruler in the Exultet was maintained all the way up until 1870 in France, at the end of Emperor Napoleon III's rule. The Missal of Trent also had the curious effect of imposing a prayer at the end for the Holy Roman Emperor across the entire Roman Catholic world, regardless of nationality. That prayer was finally removed with the 1955 Holy Week revisions.
Now let the angelic host of heaven exult, let the divine mysteries be celebrated with exultation, and let the trumpet of salvation sound for the victory of so great a King.
Let the earth rejoice, irradiated with so great brilliancy, and illuminated by the splendour of the eternal King, let it perceive the darkness of the universe to have been done away.
Let mother church also be joyful, adorned with the brilliancy of so great a light, and let this court resound with the mighty voices of peoples.
Wherefore, most dearly beloved brethren, as ye stand before the so wonderful brilliance of this holy light, I beseech you invoke along with me the tender mercy of almighty God;
That he who hath deigned to enrol me, not for mine own merits, within the number of the Levites, pouring forth upon me the grace of his light, may cause me to declare fully the praise of this taper.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ his Son, who with him liveth and reigneth God in the unity of the Holy Ghost. World without end.
R. Amen.
V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with thy spirit.
V. Lift up your hearts.
R. We lift them up unto the Lord.
V. Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.
R. It is meet and right so to do.
Because it is very meet and right to proclaim with full desire of heart and mind, and through the instrumentality of the voice, the invisible God almighty, the Father, and his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, together with the Holy Ghost.
Who paid for us the debt of Adam to the eternal Father, and blotted out the bond of the old sin by his holy blood.
For this is the Paschal feast, in which that true Lamb is slain, and the door-posts are consecrated by his blood.
This is the night in which thou first madest our fathers, the children of Israel, whom thou leddest up out of Egypt, to pass through the Red Sea dry-shod.
This, therefore, is the night in which he cleared away the shades of sin by the pillar of light.
This is the night which, as at this day, sets apart from the vices of this world and from the darkness of sin, and restores to grace, and unites in sanctity the believers in Christ throughout the whole world.
This is the night in which Christ burst the bonds of death, and rose a conqueror from the grave.
For it had advantaged us nothing to be born except we had the advantage of redemption.
O marvellous condescension of thy loving-kindness concerning us!
O inestimable tenderness of love! thou gavest up thy Son to redeem thy servant.
O truly necessary sin of Adam and of ourselves, which was blotted out by the death of Christ!
O happy guilt, the desert of which was to gain such and so great a Redeemer!
O truly blessed night, to the desert of which alone was granted to know the time and the hour in which Christ rose from the grave!
This is the night of which it was written, And the night is as clear as the day, and, Then shall my night be turned to day.
Therefore, the hallowing of this night putteth wickedness to flight, washeth away sins, and restoreth innocency to the fallen, and joy to the sorrowful ; it banisheth hatred, and prepareth peace, and maketh sovereignties to yield.
Therefore, in favour of this night, receive, O holy Father,
Here the deacon shall put incense into the candle or into the candlestick in the form of a cross; and in the same way into the small candle, the bearer thereof approaching with it.
the evening sacrifice of this incense.
Which the holy church offereth to thee by the hands of her ministers in this solemn oblation of wax, the work of the bee.
But now we know the praise of this pillar, which the glowing fire kindleth to the honour of God.
At this point the candle shall he lit from the new fire, and not be extinguished till after Compline on the day following. And the Paschal candle shall burn continuously throughout Easter week at Matins, and at Mass, and at Vespers; and likewise on the Octave of Easter. But on all Sundays from the Octave of Easter until Ascension Day it shall be lit at Mass only, as well as on the feasts of St. Mark the Evangelist, and of SS. Philip and James the Apostles. On the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary, and on the Invention of the Holy Cross it shall he lighted as on the Octave of Easter. Then shall the candle-bearers light their candles throughout the church.
Bees!
Which although it be divided into parts of borrowed light, knoweth not loss. It is fed by the liquid wax which the queen bee produced for the composition of this precious taper.
O blessed night, which spoiled the Egyptians, and enriched the Hebrews! Night in which heavenly things are united to earthly.
We beseech thee, O Lord, that this candle, consecrated to the honour of thy name, may last unfailing for dispelling the darkness of this night.
Being accepted for its sweet odour, let it be mingled with the lights above.
May the Morning Star find it burning. That Morning Star, I say, who knoweth no setting; He who returned from the grave and shone serene upon mankind.
We, therefore, pray thee, O Lord, that thou wouldest grant unto us thy servants, all the clergy, and the most devout people, together with our father pope N., and our king N., and also our bishop N., that in quietness of time we may keep our paschal joy.
Who ever livest, reignest, rulest, and also art glorified, God alone, alone the most highest, O Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father.
An Exultet scroll from medieval southern Italy
All articles in my Holy Week 2015 series, short and long
Since I haven't made an update in a few months now, I'll preface this article with a brief recap of my doings and musings over the past two days. Indeed, this was a good weekend for medievalists, worthy of reflecting. Saturday was the feast of saints Crispin and Crispinian, two ancient Roman martyrs whose following became quite popular in later medieval England. The patron saints of cobblers, this feast was a major public holiday for everyone involved in the tanning and leathermaking industry. On the fateful morning of October 25, 1415, the hopelessly outnumbered and exhausted state of King Henry V of England's invading army prompted the Earl of Westmoreland to exclaim, "O, that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work today!" And the rest is "history", of course.
As per tradition every year, I dutifully watch the Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V and cry "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!" Every year, a French historian or two objects to the celebrating of war crimes or grossly exaggerated kill counts across the Channel, and then an English historian says nay, 'twas not so, we really did slay over nine thousand Frenchies with ten archers and a cheese knife. Saints Crispin and Crispinian themselves invariably get lost in the festivities, so this time, I share with you the following link, proposing the two martyrs as patron saints of catechists.
A good friend of many years, Theodore of the Royalty & Monarchy Site, invited me to travel up to Dallas to attend a concert given by the Choir of Westminster Abbey on Sunday the 26th, which happened to be passing through the Episcopal church where he sings during their tour of the United States. Yes, the same choir that sings at the burial place and coronation site of the kings of England since 1065. The same choir that millions of folks otherwise oblivious to all this stuff heard while watching the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. And the same choir that my fiancée and I heard when we visited the Abbey for choral Evensong on Christmas Day of 2011 (we were checking up on stolen property). Theodore probably didn't expect me so willing to attend as to bring the entire family for the ride, but I did, and though it was quite a hectic trip to and fro (six hours each way) with very little time to stop and relax, it was certainly worth it.
Sunday morning began with a visit to the church of Mater Dei, Irving. Though I have numerous friends who are or were seminarians of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, and have attended Masses celebrated by FSSP priests before, this was the first time I ever actually visited one of their churches. Sung Mass began at 9 in the morning, which despite being the most traditional time to celebrate it (following the divine hour of Terce), is always a maddening proposition for us not-morning folk. It was the feast of Christ the King, which is always on the last Sunday of October in the 1962 calendar and, despite the feast's recent coinage, gave heightened significance to Saturday's royal victory and that afternoon's equally royal entourage. There was a rather lengthy homily on the recent synod on the family in Rome given by Father Wolfe, who I briefly met during a visit to the ill-fated Fisher-More College in Fort Worth a couple years ago. If some homilies are like cotton candy and others are like meat and potatoes, this one was rather like eating a brick that chipped my tooth. Father Hunwicke this, Pope Honorius that, but it seemed to give solace to my fiancée who was entertaining thoughts of converting to Eastern Orthodoxy after the fiasco of the midterm report. After Mass, there was a Eucharistic procession in honor of Christ the King around the parking lot, Benediction, and multiplication of the doughnuts and muffins. The people were friendly, and a few even conversed with me and Lauren. An unfortunate ad for Rick Santorum on a bulletin board in the narthex, and an even more unfortunate painting of the Sacred Heart, detracted from an otherwise edifying experience.
Folks filing back in to Mater Dei after the procession. They did the best they could with this old Korean Presbyterian church building.
After Mater Dei, it was lunch with Theodore, where he, Lauren, and I talked at length about choral music and other matters of import, and then on to the purpose of the trip: to listen to the Westminster Abbey Choir in concert. One thing can be said for the people who built the Episcopal Church in America: they were not stingy in giving. The Church of the Incarnation, from nave to parish hall, was a lot nicer than what I'm used to in an ordinary parish church. Now, I must concur with Lauren, who remarked that the surroundings felt devoid of the presence of God that we feel when inside a Catholic church, but that's another story for another time. Yesterday, I was a guest, supporting an institution I'm quite fond of: the traditional choir of men and boys.
The place was packed to the brim. We were forced to sit in an awkward place in the north transept, unable to really see anything. Interestingly, we were also stuck in the north transept when we heard them at Evensong on Christmas Day at the abbey itself, in 2011.
The repertory was mostly of large texts by 19th and 20th century composers that I didn't know much about, but it began with "Hosanna to the Son of David" by Orlando Gibbons, then two responsories by Thomas Tallis (Videte miraculum from Candlemas, and Loquebantur from First Vespers of Pentecost). There was a huge choral work set to three prayers by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister who earned death in a concentration camp for his opposition to the Nazi Party. My favorite of all the texts that I had not heard of before was this bit called "The Twelve" by Wystan Hugh Auden, set to music by William Walton (this sample courtesy of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge):
I
Without arms or charm of culture,
Persons of no importance
From an unimportant Province,
They did as the Spirit bid,
Went forth into a joyless world
Of swords and rhetoric
To bring it joy.
When they heard the Word, some demurred, some mocked, some were shocked: but many were stirred and the Word spread. Lives long dead were quickened to life; the sick were healed by the Truth revealed; released into peace from the gin of old sin, men forgot themselves in the glory of the story told by the Twelve.
Then the Dark Lord, adored by this world, perceived the threat of the Light to his might. From his throne he spoke to his own. The loud crowd, the sedate engines of State, were moved by his will to kill. It was done. One by one, they were caught, tortured, and slain.
II
O Lord, my God,
Though I forsake thee
Forsake me not,
But guide me as I walk
Through the valley of mistrust,
And let the cry of my disbelieving absence
Come unto thee,
Thou who declared unto Moses:
"I shall be there."
III
Children play about the ancestral graves, for the dead no longer walk.
Excellent still in their splendour are the antique statues: but can do neither good nor evil.
Beautiful still are the starry heavens: but our fate is not written there.
Holy still is speech, but there is no sacred tongue: the Truth may be told in all.
Twelve as the winds and the months are those who taught us these things: envisaging each in an oval glory, let us praise them all with a merry noise.
(Quite metal, when you think about it.)
The choir stalls at the (Episcopal) church of the Incarnation in Dallas, where the concert was held. Unlike in American Catholic-dom, choir stalls seem omnipresent in Episcopal-land.
The concert ended with an impromptu piece by the Catholic recusant, William Byrd, and as they left, I was more convinced than ever of the need to restore or establish this choral tradition in the Catholic Church, the United States, and the rest of the world. I became smug when I learned that the Abbey Choir's Master of Music, Mr. James O'Donnell, is not only Catholic; he is a papal knight (Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great) and the first Catholic to direct the Abbey Choir since the Protestant Reformation. When the previous Organist and Master of Music was sacked in 1998, all the top musicians and choir directors in the Church of England had been passed over in favor of Mr. O'Donnell, choirmaster at Westminster Cathedral (the chief church of the Catholic Church of England and Wales, oft confused with the Abbey). What an honor, indeed. But let's now get to the heart of the matter: why are these men and boys' choirs so important?
First, they fulfill a function in the Catholic tradition that women simply cannot. Before you jump up and say, "hey, I/my wife/sister/daughter/mother is in church choir" and send me a hatemail, let me be clear: yes, the Church has allowed female altar servers for decades in the modern form of the Mass, and women in lay choirs for over a century; and it's true, there's nothing inherently wrong with women in lay choirs (in civilian dress, typically singing from a loft or otherwise hidden from the public gaze). I'd be happy for all my daughters to join a lay choir when they come of age. A lay choir is nothing more than a specialized subset of the faithful at large, and if the faithful are encouraged to sing the Ordinary of the Mass, as they did in ancient times, there can't be anything wrong with a specialized subset (naturally including women) doing the same thing. There are women in lay choirs in every church I sing at, so if I had a problem with them outright, I guess I'd be shown the door sooner or later.
But as choirs go, the traditional Latin Mass's rubrics only concern themselves with one: the liturgical or ecclesiastical choir*, assumed (just as with altar servers) to all be clerics in cassock and surplice, seated in choir stalls in the sanctuary (or quire, or chancel), the gospel and epistle sides facing one another. And naturally, as women cannot be clerics in the Catholic Church, those who populated the choir were all male. These men and boys alone were expected to sing the five proper chants; Introit, Gradual, Alleuia (or Tract in Lent), Offertory, and Communion; which change every day. For years, our men's schola had to juggle learning five all-new, melismatic chants virtually every Sunday, only to put them away for the entire year until that Sunday occurred again, while also maintaining jobs, children, schooling, or some combination of the above. Sung Masses aren't quite as frequent at the diocesan 1962 Mass here this year, but even so, if our schola wasn't there, there wouldn't be any chant at all.
In the medieval world, on the other hand, this task was generally left to boys and men who dedicated their entire lives to the sacred art of chant: clerks ordained to the minor orders at the parish level (perhaps permanently), monks in their monasteries, students in their college chapels, and canons in their cathedrals. No priest was exempt from the duty to sing. Today we have the expression, "I asked my priest to say Mass for my sick cat yesterday", but in the Middle Ages, you were more like to say that a priest sang Mass for such-and-such an intention, such as not dying from plague or shipwreck. Hence, in Shakespeare's play, on the eve of Saint Crispin's, Henry V gets on his knees and prays for pardon for his father having usurped the crown from Richard II:
O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!
I Richard's body have interred anew;
And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood:
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.
But why boys, you ask? For American Catholics, the answer is easy. "Start 'em young." We Americans have long been used to the idea of the "altar boy", encouraging them from the time they can take directions to serve the altar in the hope of fostering another vocation to the priesthood. Unfortunately, we also have historically tended to throw them right into low Mass where the server assumes many of the duties of the deacon and subdeacon, but the average boy can only learn so many directions and Latin phrases at a time, so we have also gotten accustomed to the fatal double-whammy of 1.) sloppy serving, and 2.) thinking older teenagers and adult men are too old to serve, thus forbidding the problem from ever being solved.
Medieval Christendom had another model: yes, boys served Mass (and even played at being bishop from time to time), but they started with minor positions at solemn Masses such as torchbearing before tackling low Mass, in the unlikely event that they did so at all. But even before boys carried torches, they had to learn how to simply sit in choir and sing the Mass. In those days, singing the entire liturgy from cover to cover was still the norm, and it remains true today that singing is a skill best cultivated from an early age. At the turn of the second millennium, the western Church's bases of influence gradually shifted from the monasteries (those fortresses and repositories of knowledge in a more brutish era) to the bishops and their cathedrals. Everywhere, bishops raced to raise up the tallest tower, the largest nave, the grandest stained-glass windows. But what was the point of developing Gothic architecture, spending millions, and putting thousands of laborers to work on a building that would be empty most of the time? No; the cathedrals of the Gothic age would have the divine hours sung round the clock by the bishop's canons. And who would assist and eventually replace them in their holy duties? The boys of the cathedral school.
Here stood the predecessor of the Tridentine seminary system. Before there were seminaries, Charlemagne ruled that cathedrals in his empire establish schools so that boys may learn to read, write, sing, and go on to serve as the next generation of clergy. The boys sang the daily Masses and Office, and the better they sang, the further the bishop grew in prestige, and the more likely the great nobles of the realm would send their sons to the schools. From these early foundations sprung the first colleges, and the universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. It was also these boys who, together with the men, developed the additional voices to the plainchant which led to polyphony. By the 15th century, polyphonic settings of the Mass were everywhere, and as there were still neither women nor castrati in church choirs of any sort, the treble voices for all these compositions necessarily had to be sung by boys.
The Catholic Church in America has never had a strong tradition of choral music, but now there's a crisis of bad music throughout the entire Catholic world. This was readily apparent when the Westminster Abbey Choir visited Pope Benedict a few years ago and sang Palestrina with the Sistine Chapel Choir, making the Italians look like amateurs and prima donnas at their own game, in their own house. What's worse: the art of singing itself has been resigned, in many Catholics' eyes, to a feminine activity. "My boys serve, my girls sing;" as though there were a great distinction between the two! Thus, if I were to ask someone if they were interested in joining our schola, the answer 90% of the time will be, "I can't sing". Perhaps if they had started learning when they were eight years old, it would be another story. And now we have a problem of many generations of churchmen in America and elsewhere who can't sing, never grew up in a singing environment, and therefore, sing very little or none of the liturgy during their entire priestly careers. All of a sudden, a great tradition of sung liturgy is as dead as the public Divine Office, save for the Eastern rites and a few pockets of sanity here and there. Imagine how different our musical culture would be if every cathedral, if every parish, had a dedicated program for training boys to sing daily services, assisted by a sizable contingent of adult male scholars.
The (Catholic) church of Saint George, Sudbury (London), in the early 20th century. During a nuptial Mass, it appears two cantors, or rulers of the choir, are leading the Gradual with a full, surpliced choir of men and boys before the altar.
It's my general experience that when it comes to Church matters, women tend to be much more willing to volunteer, even if they're juggling multiple young children. They'll do whatever they're asked, behind the scenes, without reward or recognition. Men need to be led by example, to be seen and recognized for their service. Certainly less noble, and yet, there's the paradox that no matter how intensely religious a mother is, if a father is inactive in his faith, their beliefs are unlikely to be passed on to the children when they come of age.
Therefore, I propose an experiment for all churchmen and altar guild leaders who recognize the problems in our musical culture:
1.) Let traditional choir stalls, or at least a few movable seats, be placed within the sanctuary of every parish (for those with rails and claustrophobic sanctuary spaces, this may necessitate moving them forward).
2.) Since altar guilds usually have many more servers on the roster than can actually serve on any given Sunday, let all those who are not scheduled to serve a specific position be assigned to sit in choir. This way, new servers can witness the ceremonies of the liturgy up close before taking them up themselves, and so that they can also lead the laity in the proper sitting, standing, or kneeling postures, rather than the confusion that abounds in so many places I've attended (true that in the traditional Latin Mass, there are no rubrics for the laity, but I've seen people awkwardly split between standing and kneeling after the Canon, for example, for lack of direction rather than strict personal preference).
3.) Let all the male singers of the choir also don the cassock and surplice, properly called "choir dress", and take places in the sanctuary, leading all the other servers in choir to sing the Mass; at least the Ordinary chants (Kyrie, Gloria, etc.) whenever they are sung in plainchant. If you place boys in altar service with the hope of raising vocations, they'll need to know how to read square notation as much as the prayers at the foot of the altar.
4.) By starting to train boys to sing at a young age, hopefully as they grow into adults, the community will always have trained chanters ready to step in and lead the chants of the Mass, rather than work the same three or four dedicated chanters one Sunday after the other!
I'm just pontificating from my proverbial armchair here, but it seems like this model, as it was practiced in the great cathedrals of the medieval world, would go a ways toward restoring liturgy worldwide to its ideal, normatively sung form.
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*The liturgical or ecclesiastical choir was defined as such by Pope Pius X in his 1903 motu proprio on sacred music, Tra le sollecitudini:
"With the exception of the melodies proper to the celebrant at the altar and to the ministers, which must be always sung in Gregorian Chant, and without accompaniment of the organ, all the rest of the liturgical chant belongs to the choir of levites, and, therefore, singers in the church, even when they are laymen, are really taking the place of the ecclesiastical choir. Hence the music rendered by them must, at least for the greater part, retain the character of choral music." And, "On the same principle it follows that singers in church have a real liturgical office, and that therefore women, being incapable of exercising such office, cannot be admitted to form part of the choir. Whenever, then, it is desired to employ the acute voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church."
The facial expression here has a certain semblance to Lady Mary Crawley's.
The front door, the great threshold for the unchurched seeker: an important but oft-overlooked place to for a church to put in its finest craftsmanship.
A few of you who know me "in real life" are aware of the various misgivings I've shared in recent weeks toward certain... attitudes and practices in the institutional Church, especially anything that contributes to the unhealthy sort of clericalism that frowns upon us questioning the bad decisions of bishops and popes. From the recent, seemingly arbitrary banning of the Latin Mass at Fisher-More College in Fort Worth to Catholic talking head Michael Voris's fatwa against anyone who criticizes Pope Francis's weekly shenanigans, and, of course, the Vatican City's refusal to extradite one of its resident archbishops to answer accusations of child molestation even after a full decade into the sexual abuse crisis, it's true that my faith in the men in red and white hats is at an all-time low. You may, then, find it strange that I still support the vocation and mission of the ancient monastic institutions. What do the men and women who take vows of poverty, chastity, and unflinching obedience to the rule of a religious order and its appointed superiors have to do with rebuilding the faith of a Church that has caused so much devastation in the name of "pray, pay, and obey"? Surely they are the problem and not the solution?
On the contrary, even though I've opined that mandatory priestly celibacy has perhaps outlived its usefulness for the Church at large (and been pilloried for such an opinion by fellow Catholics enough already), I have always been a steadfast believer in monasticism and all it stands for: foundations of prayer around the clock, oases of learning and the preservation of western civilization, and total submission of the soul to God in pursuit of one of the many hard sayings of Jesus we try to tone down and explain away in metaphors: "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me." But until last weekend, monasticism was only an idea, as distant as the image of Saint Benedict on the right-hand column of this blog. So when one of my friends began organizing a retreat to the Benedictine Abbey of Our Lady of the Annunciation at Clear Creek, Oklahoma, I jumped at the opportunity to witness the monks' way of life firsthand. I had never been to an active monastery before, so for me, it promised to be on of those rare leaps from the stuff of a modern medievalist's obscure books, to reality.
What follows here is a diary-esque account of the days I spent at the abbey, followed by a brief reflection on what I learned.
The first day: Thursday
I, along with two companions from San Antonio, ventured north by car for some nine or ten hours with a mind to get to the abbey in time for Vespers (6:30pm). Save for gas and a brief but delicious stop at a Chik-fil-A somewhere in Whitesville, Texas, we blazed through one vast swathe of parched, casino-laden Indian territory after another until, at last, at the end of a bumpy dirt road in the middle of nowhere, the abbey's edifice came into view. The sun had nearly sunk into the horizon, but we made it for Vespers with a little time to spare. Before entering, we had a reunion of sorts with two of the founding members of our schola whom had since moved to greener pastures, and whom I hadn't seen in a few years. They were also part of our group but arrived in a separate car from Houston (where you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy).
My first picture upon arriving. The sky grew progressively cloudier from this point on.
At the ringing of the bell, we filed into the church, a Romanesque fortress in stone. True to style, the windows were small and high upon the walls. The floor, ceiling, and the great portal at the western entrance were unfinished; there was still much work to be done. The altar rail gave only about half of the church's total length to the laity, almost like they were an afterthought. The rest of the sacred space was reserved for the brothers. About forty of them, all habited in solid black, entered at once from their cloister and filled the inward-facing choir stalls, two rows on each side, with the abbot holding a cathedra-like seat at the east end of the gospel side. The service began with a monk intoning the words from the 69th psalm, Deus in adjutorium meum intende; O God, come to my assistance. It proceeded according to the traditional Benedictine Office: entirely in Latin, entirely chanted (no words uttered in a normal spoken tone whatsoever), and in most respects the same as the standard Office according to the pre-Vatican II Roman Breviary. It wasn't long into Vespers when I mused that they all sang with the quality of any Gregorian chant CD you could think of.... and as they should, since Clear Creek, and its mother abbey at Fontgombault in France are heirs to the legacy of the Abbey of Solesmes, known best for their work in restoring the art of Gregorian chant in the 19th century after centuries of corruption or disuse. It also helps that the church itself, with its high ceiling and stone or brick surfaces all around, was perfectly constructed to receive and resonate with the sounds of the chant.
My cell.
Afterward, we met one of the priests assigned to watch over us, dubbed "Father Guestmaster". He greeted us, asked our names, and showed us to our rooms. The guesthouse was effectively a wing of the cloister sectioned off for (male) visitors. All rooms had windows facing out to the wilderness in the west. The cells themselves were plain and a bit on the small side, but hardly prison-like. I slept comfortably, with the exception that each night grew progressively colder until, by Sunday, I was consistently chilled to the bone. I was convinced that all the thermostat in my room did was make the room even colder if I turned it on.
Around the same time we brought our bags to our cells, the final group of three tore into the parking lot, and the fellowship of the ring, or of past and present altar servers and chanters from the Latin Mass community in San Antonio, was complete. It soon became time for dinner, so we were ushered in to a long, poorly lit hallway to await entry to the refectory (literally, "place of restoration", and much cooler-sounding than "dining hall" or "cafeteria"). The nervous waiting, coupled with the low sound of monks chanting a litany of saints seeping through the crack under the door was like waiting outside the vice principal's office in middle school when you got in trouble. But when the door opened, the expected response was quite the contrary. Attended by one the younger brothers carrying a silver ewer and dish, the abbot himself was there to welcome us and ceremonially wash our hands. I later learned that such a reception is prescribed in the Rule of Saint Benedict, the ancient governing rule of all Benedictine monasteries and their offshoots: "Let the Abbot give the guests water for their hands" (chapter 53).
Dinner was a regimented affair, not unlike my recollection of basic training in the US Army. The refectory was arranged with four rows of long tables, with one on a raised platform laid perpendicular to the others for the abbot; really, positioned like the judge's bench in a courthouse, except with the cross of Christ suspended behind him rather than the seal of the state. The guests were directed to sit at the inner tables. Not only did we have nicer chairs and dinnerware than the monks, we were also served richer food, especially since the monks were fasting through Lent. The first night's courses were soup and bread, followed by a beef pasta dish (though the monks were forbidden meat themselves), and a dessert. I've heard that they would have served us wine were our visit not during Lent, but we had to make do with either water or fruit punch. The cook was trained in France and every fare was of high quality without being decadent. Best of all, where the monks had to serve themselves, they provided us with waiters, or perhaps you could call them footmen. We apportioned our own food from serving trays laid in the middle of the table, but a monk would remove your dish within ten seconds of your finishing it and replace it with the next; always taking from your right, replacing from your left. Soup spoon, then knife and fork, then dessert spoon. By now you may wonder why I found something as mundane as dinner to be worthy of so much detail, but keep in mind that I don't even have a dinner table to eat from at home in the first place, so like a modern savage, my meals are generally consumed on a couch positioned before my television screen. In truth, I ate better at the abbey, even during Lent, than I do at home.
It's important to mention the centrality of reading at meals. The Rule of Saint Benedict orders that a lector must be appointed every week: "The meals of the brothers should not be without reading." And, "let absolute silence be kept at table, so that no whispering may be heard nor any voice except the reader's." At Clear Creek that evening, after grace but before we broke bread, the lector read a portion of the Rule regarding the duties of the kitcheners (I assume they read from the Rule at every dinner of the year, on repeat, forever). That ended, we began eating while the lector switched to another book, this one being Saint Dominic and His Times, specifically a chapter from it entitled "The Lateran Council". It also bears mentioning that whatever the lector reads, he does so by chanting it in recto tono (on one note). Let's say for now that this practice sometimes leads to unintentional hilarity.
When the abbot struck his gavel, the lector ceased and all rose for a prayer of thanksgiving (chanted in Latin, like everything else). Guests could resume eating if they needed afterward, but for a monk, when the abbot says you're done, you're done. We withdrew to a parlor and temporarily broke silence to chat with Father Guestmaster. Then night was upon us, and therefore, Compline. We and the monks reconvened in the crypt chapel directly under the main church to pray the final office of the day. Unlike Vespers, this was sung mostly in recto tono, and was over before you knew it. Following along in one of their booklets, I was reminded of my favorite part of Compline: Psalm 90 (Qui habitat).
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.
The biggest variation I noticed from the standard Roman Office is that the abbot ended Compline by sprinkling us with holy water while the monks chanted Asperges Me (like before sung or solemn Mass on Sundays). With that done and the monks retiring for the night, we entered "great silence": no speaking until after breakfast the next morning. I hit the sack and slept like rock for the next eleven hours.
The second day: Friday
By the time I awoke, around 8am, the monks had been at continuous prayer for the past three hours: Matins, Lauds, and low Mass. I made my way down in time for Prime: the most important office of the morning, Father Guestmaster said, because after Prime comes breakfast! In truth, breakfast was a self-served affair and attended only by the guests and a handful of the brothers; in my observation, typically the younger ones or the ones most likely to do a lot of manual labor. The monks ate standing, and there was no lector, perhaps because the Rule only envisions lunch and dinner. I recall us only having cereal and bread with jam or peanut butter to eat.
To pass the time until the next office, we took a walk up a hill west of the monastery, called "Weathertop" by someone in our group at some point. Some of our less athletic companions felt winded on the way up, but I was more worried about sliding face-forward on the way back down for lack of proper footwear. The view of the surrounding countryside from the top of said hill was excellent.
"Weathertop"
We returned to the crypt for the office of Terce around 10am, followed immediately by the conventual Mass (or "community Mass" attended by all the choirmonks, as opposed to the many private low Masses each attended by only one server earlier that morning). It was celebrated in the form of what you might call a "sung low Mass": one priest and one server, though with everything chanted. A schola formed a circle in the middle of the chancel, between the stalls, to sing all the propers, but I noticed that all the monks present joined in the singing at certain parts of each chant as well. There were a handful of small divergences I noticed from your standard Latin Mass according to the 1962 books, but that deserves its own section, which I've written at the very end of this article. For now, I'll remark that there was no sermon, and that a few local laity came to attend and receive Communion, though if I recall correctly, Communion was not distributed to any of the monks themselves. I assume any monk who wanted to receive had already done so at one of the earlier low Masses.
I don't recall what I did after Mass, but as with breakfast, lunch was to immediately follow the office of Sext. By this point, I was drawn back to the church yet again more to present myself to lunch on time, rather than strictly out of devotion to God at regular intervals. Sext, like the other little hours, was mercifully brief, for all this prayer was working up an unusually monstrous appetite. Filing back into the refectory, we took our seats with all the other monks after grace, but held off on digging in until after the lector had read an appointed reading from Scripture, Genesis, I think. Then a great cacophony of metal against metal ensued as the abbot signaled his permission to commence with the eating. Being a Friday, we were served tuna pizza. By this time, I started to notice the occasional monk genuflecting before the abbot, seemingly at random points throughout the meal. I was later informed that a monk does this when he makes a mistake. In the context of meals, this may involve something like dropping a spoon or making a mess.
"When anyone is engaged in any sort of work, whether in the kitchen, in the cellar, in a shop, in the bakery, in the garden, while working at some craft, or in any other place, and he commits some fault, or breaks something, or loses something, or transgresses in any other way whatsoever, if he does not come immediately before the Abbot and the community of his own accord to make satisfaction and confess his fault, then when it becomes known through another, let him be subjected to a more severe correction." --The Rule, chapter 46
But then I later noticed the same random genuflecting going on at divine services, too (though there, they would usually stay in their places in the stalls rather than approach the abbot). There, they humble themselves by genuflecting whenever they make a mistake in praying, such as by mispronouncing a Latin word, hitting a wrong note in the chant, perhaps even when nodding off. The Rule says:
"When anyone has made a mistake while reciting a Psalm, a responsory, an antiphon or a lesson, if he does not humble himself there before all by making a satisfaction, let him undergo a greater punishment because he would not correct by humility what he did wrong through carelessness." --chapter 45
Let's just say that if the priest at the local Latin Mass where I now live had to observe this rule, Mass would run six hours, minimum. I'm not joking.
One last word on lunch, though: after the Scripture reading, the lector began, where he presumably left off the previous afternoon, with a reading from something unexpected: not a saint's life or a work of theology, but a secular history book, specifically Great River: The Rio Grande in American History by Paul Horgan ("Volume 2: Mexico and the United States, Book 4: The United States Rio Grande, Chapter 5: The Cannonade, continued", as the lector would preface it). For a good while, Brother Lector regaled us with a detailed account of General Zachary Taylor and his men's misadventures during the Mexican-American War. Let me remind you that the lector chants everything in recto tono, without exception. More than one of us grinned when the book said of General Pedro de Ampudia: "he was a great generaaaal, he was a brave maaaan, he was a bloodthirsty fiiiend who in marching to the river just nooow had refused to be encumbered by sick and straggling soldiers and had ordered such wretches to be shot". I asked Father Guestmaster about the book later that evening, and he said they had been working on it more or less every lunch since January, and that we would hear about what happened at Port Isabel tomorrow afternoon unless they would get a new issue of l'Osservatore Romano (the Vatican City's daily newspaper). Elation abounded through the camp.
After the office of None, around 3pm, was the appointed time for guests to engage in manual labor if they so wished. I was tasked, along with my good friend of several years, now a diocesan seminarian, of picking up rocks off of a field and dumping them into a wheelbarrow, then to be dumped in turn in a nearby ditch. At the rate we were going, the job would be done perhaps after Pope Francis retires. To pass the time, we talked about unmonkish things such as the Total War game series and conspiracy theories, all while hunched over like the anarchist peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A few wheelbarrows full of rocks later, one of the brothers announced an end to our toils. I decided it was a good time to lounge in the guest library after my exertions and actually get some reading done, as I had imagined I would have ample time to do. Under the afternoon sun's warming rays on a chair positioned comfortably below a west-facing window, I started on Saint John Fisher's Exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms. The book is a compilation of sermons, one for each of the psalms of David relating to the confession of sins. Praying the seven penitential psalms as a group was a standard practice throughout the Middle Ages until modern times. Fisher, the only bishop in the entire English church to defy King Henry VIII's separation from his wife and the Roman church, was beheaded for treason. But before that, he was renowned as a prolific writer and leading thinker of the northern Renaissance. These sermons was preached and published in 1508, a year before Henry VIII became king, and reprinted seven times in the course of Fisher's life. Reading them was a trip into the mind of an extremely learned man, yet accessible enough to a common spiritual rube like myself. There was no need to build an elevator to ascend the ivory tower of scholastic wisdom, for which I was most grateful. One point that struck me was how, early in the very first sermon, Fisher spoke of the adultery of King David and Bathsheba: "David immediately forgot the goodness of almighty God and again fell into the sin of pride, being proud of the great number and multitude of his people against the commandment of the law of God." It seemed prophetic in light of Henry VIII's great matter with Katherine of Aragon many years later.
The library in the guesthouse is filled with books rebound in handsome hardcovers by the monks themselves.
The rest of the evening from Vespers to bedtime proceeded exactly as it did the previous night, except that this time, several hours of tossing and turning had passed before I could fall asleep. This usually happens when I sleep a lot the prior night and then try to go to bed early the following evening.
The third day: Saturday
By the time I could pry myself out from the covers and withstand the chill air of my cell, Prime had already commenced in the crypt. It was almost over when I stumbled in, but not to fear: I had ample opportunity to catch up on missed prayer a couple hours later when I attended the day's conventual Mass, opened a hand missal I grabbed from the table outside, opened it to the day's readings and realized it was an Ember Saturday. For those who meet the phrase "ember day" with a blank stare, these days mark the beginning of one of the four seasons with intense prayer and fasting. In ancient times, the Senate and people of Rome implored their gods for a successful seeding or harvesting, depending on the time of year. After the ascendancy of the Christian faith, the Church saw fit to keep the days of prayer, and for many centuries, they were observed as part of western Europe's agricultural cycle. Unfortunately, our path to industrialism has taken away this sense of unity with the land, so the Ember days declined in observance until at last, with the issuing of the new Mass in 1970, the Church effectively abolished them entirely. For the monks of Clear Creek, this last point is irrelevant since they happily use the 1962 order. But what all this means in the context of my account here is that Mass was going to take a lot longer than I thought. See, on an Ember Saturday in the old Mass, the Scripture readings appointed for that day number not only the usual Epistle and Gospel, but five readings from the Old Testament.
To tell you true, one of the few "reforms" I appreciate about the new Mass is how it restored lessons from the Old Testament to common use (in the traditional rite, they had been mostly phased out during the High Middle Ages with a handful of exceptions, this day being among them). Nonetheless, five lessons at once made today feel like a marathon of prayer. For each lesson, a different monk emerged from his place in the stalls to chant the full reading in the traditional tone. Between each lesson, the schola formed a circle to chant the full gradual. After that followed a genuflection and collect prayed by the priest-celebrant. Oh, and don't forget the canticle of the three children. It was beautiful, but brutal for a man of the world. And imagine, in the Church's young days, this Mass would actually begin on Saturday evening as a vigil and run all the way to Sunday morning. With seven readings, each would be punctuated by men being ordained to one of the seven orders (porter, then exorcist, then lector, and so on up to the order of priest after the gospel, which was read by one of the newly ordained deacons), for ordinations were once restricted to one of the four Ember Saturdays of the year. (On that note, though it seems even traditionalist seminaries today seldom hold ordinations on the Ember days, I did learn later that the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter had diaconal ordinations at their seminary in Lincoln, Nebraska that same day. I can only imagine that their Mass took forever.) As for us in the pews at Clear Creek, I almost felt a bit sorry for the old church ladies who had come out to the abbey, thinking they were just attending another daily Mass as usual.... almost, but not quite.
After the liturgy, we were most eager to get outside and take a walk. One group returned to Weathertop to seek out either transfiguration or a good cell phone signal; another split off in the opposite direction, downhill toward a stream. I was in this latter group, where we chased a badger to his hiding hole for no reason whatsoever, then held an impromptu stone-skipping contest at the stream by a bridge. At three good skips, I was about to win until, with one last "okay, this is really the last one" parting shot, J.S. made a miraculous five and took home the nonexistent trophy.
From here, I can only hazily recall a smoke break, feelings of famishment, and anticipation for the next exciting episode of Great River: The Rio Grande in American History as told by Brother Anonymous. The endless collecting of rocks resumed after None, though several more guests were assigned this time around. After our penance/peon roleplaying session ended, I went to the gift shop to continue another medieval tradition: "buying" a Mass, or more properly speaking, making a donation to the abbey for one of the priests to offer Mass for a specific intention of mine. Some of the priests were hearing confession for the guests, but as irrational as it is, I was too intimidated to go myself.
Our rock-picking adventures took place in the clearing in the upper portion of this photo.
The rest of the evening proceeded as before. I resolved to go to bed as early as possible so that, on the last day of my visit, I could catch at least the latter part of Matins.
The fourth day: Sunday
I arose at around 6am, feeling the coldest yet. It was still completely dark outside, and raining to boot. Matins had proceeded for about an hour already. I bundled up with several layers, a scarf, and gloves, and power-walked to the crypt. Only a handful of laity were present this early. Given Matins's length, there was no simple booklet to follow along with. I used a hardbound breviary left on the table outside, but without an English translation on the opposite column, my understanding was sketchy at best. I endured the tail end of Matins and Lauds, after which it was time for the low Masses.
What took place at this moment is hard to put in words and almost certainly alien to any Catholic born after 1962, if not even earlier. Ten of the abbey priests retreated briefly to the vestry, then emerged in vestments and fanned out to each of the ten altars positioned around the crypt: four four positioned against the wall within alcoves on either side, the main freestanding altar, and another final one behind it against the wall of the apse, where the tabernacle rested. Each began celebrating their own private Mass all at the same time. By now, even though it was still only about 7am, the crypt was teeming with locals coming in to fulfill their Sunday Mass obligation. Old church ladies, families with ten children (all of whom inexplicably are boys and all sporting the exact same haircut), and marriageable young women sent by the devil to tempt novices from their vocation. I decided to break away from the pews and beelined to the priest saying Mass in the alcove on the far right and back of the crypt: first, because he was wearing a chasuble clearly based on a Pugin design and pattern, and second, because he seemed lonely, his Mass only attended by B.R., my seminarian friend. When I knelt beside him, the alcove was at capacity. This entire experience was truly the epitome of a missa privata: imagine being so close, you could reach out and touch the priest's chasuble at any given moment of the whole Mass. Unlike your standard low Mass, all the priests in the crypt whispered the entire liturgy, not just the Canon and so on. My priest in particular, I noticed, beat his chest with a resounding thud at mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Altogether, "my" Mass took about 20 or 25 minutes. I then mused about why the locals didn't mind coming so early in the morning: their Sunday obligation was fulfilled in record time, with no sermon to worry about and no pesky hymns. I can understand why this sort of Sunday experience could have been abused in the preconciliar era by Catholics with a punchcard mentality, but in its proper place, as I experienced it this day, that was by far the most edifying low Mass I have ever attended. After it was over, I inadvertently broke the great silence before Prime to remark to my companions just how surreal it all was, being so intimately close to the action on the altar as a mere layman in the pew, as well as witnessing all the other Masses being offered at the same time, in the same place, for undoubtedly a wide variety of intentions.
We resolved to depart the abbey immediately after high Mass, so we packed up our bags and cleaned up our rooms after breakfast. I thought nothing could top what I had already seen in the three and a half days I had spent at the abbey; I was wrong. The monks chose to hold high Mass in the upper church, despite its cavernous nave being unbearably cold. Just after Terce, Father Guestmaster approached the altar rail and invited the men and boys in the pews to join the monks in a procession around the cloister, in the area normally forbidden to visitors. We stood behind the monks, who formed two columns. I was fortunate to be only a few paces behind the abbot. We processed very slowly around the square, with the wind blowing rain under the walkway and causing the monks' cloaks to flap in dramatic fashion behind them. Combined with the somber, unfamiliar chants they were singing, and the fact that my knuckles were turning purple as I tightly gripped my hand missal, I actually found myself thoroughly relishing how miserable and "English" the weather was; the atmosphere wouldn't have been the same if the day had been sunny. In a moment frozen in time, I united my prayer with the brothers, and with those of all the monks of the past two thousand years that had implored God with those very same chants to help raise up a sturdy foundation in the face of Viking invasions, plagues, famines, rapacious kings, bloodthirsty revolutions, and all other manner of terrors and tribulations more frightening than our own. I was at once a small speck in the great march of time from the cross to the final judgement.... and yet larger than life, speaking with one voice in an army larger than any empire's or proletariat's in the history of man. For a moment, I shed a tear for the beauty of what I had witnessed, for all we had lost, and for what these monks could build for themselves and future generations in the new world.
The procession returned to to the upper church and everyone filed back into their places for the conventual Mass, a solemn high Mass with the priest assisted by a deacon and subdeacon. The wind and rain battered the sides of the church and caused a great noise, as though we were riding deep the hull of Noah's ark, or but the monks paid it no heed and kept chanting the propers of Mass as though nothing were disturbing them at all. The Gospel reading was the same as yesterday's: the account of Christ transfigured before His closest disciples, with Moses and Elijah appearing beside Him. In some small way, I had climbed Mount Tabor as well; like Peter, stirred from some strange slumber. I was able to pray the Nicene Creed with a renewed belief in its words. During the offertory, I stepped aside from my pew to a shrine of the Virgin Mary and left a blessed candle, which had been gifted to me by a companion, in a candelabrium by her feet. The candle, which has probably run its course by now, was burned to offer the sacrifice of that solemn high Mass for my deceased stepfather, whose fifth anniversary of death was to pass three days hence.
There was still no sermon, despite it being the main Sunday Mass. It was just as well; oratory was unnecessary. I was content to leave that procession and high Mass as the summit of my weekend. I received a blessing from one of the priests in the gift shop, and we started the drive back to normalcy.
I had hoped to post this article in time for the feast of Saint Benedict last Friday, but it took longer than I expected to gather my thoughts. I don't have a great story of Damascus-like enlightenment to wrap up this account of my visit with, other than what I already wrote above. But I came away with a greater appreciation of the monk's role in civilization and the work they contribute to the society of Christians. It would be better to end this entry not with anything I could say, as a mere observer, but with the words of the abbot himself, Dom Philip Anderson, who was interviewed shortly before we ventured forth to the abbey. (Just ignore Father Mitchell's hokey intro before the interview itself.)
One monk's solemn profession, in the crypt church.
The monks in procession around the cloister.
The Easter fire during the Vigil.
A view of the upper church during Cardinal Burke's visit.
Cardinal Burke again, celebrating Mass in the upper church.
One of the tiny alcoves where low Mass is celebrated.
And best of all, sheepdogs in winter.
Appendix for the liturgy nerds
Early on in the article, I mentioned some divergences in the way the monks observe the 1962 Missal compared to what you might usually see in Latin Mass communities. My friends and I talked about them at various points during the trip, so I endeavored to do some research to find out more. This last section, then, is for those of you who are armchair liturgists and find minor differences in the way Mass is celebrated from place to place genuinely interesting, rather than tedious.
The following differences I noticed, by the way, all apply only to the conventual Masses (sung or solemn Masses after Terce). As far as I could tell, their low Masses were celebrated "as usual", with the exception of them being entirely whispered.
-The priest and ministers omitted the prayers at the foot of the altar (when Mass immediately follows Terce. It's possible that they pray it privately in the sacristy beforehand, but I can't say for sure).
-The priest led the entire Mass of the Catechumens from the sedilia (similar to the Novus Ordo, or in the old rite when a bishop celebrates from the throne), not the altar. The acolyte or MC held the missal open against his chest for the priest to read from. This had the interesting effect of effectively not being able to see the priest for most of the first half of the Mass, since at Clear Creek, the sedilia is tucked in an area obscured by the choir stalls.
-The priest didn't appear to privately recite anything sung by the choir, such as the Kyrie, Gloria, or Credo; he chanted them in unison with the choir instead.
-The Scripture readings were proclaimed versus populum (facing the people).
-The priest chanted the "secret" prayer at the end of the Offertory rite aloud.
-The priest chanted the doxology of the Canon (from per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso...), as a lot of priests do in the Novus Ordo.
-The Pater noster was chanted by all the monks in unison with the priest.
-The kiss of peace was exchanged between all the monks in attendance, even at "sung low Mass".
-The priest chanted even the words which are normally said in a spoken tone at high Mass (ecce Agnus Dei and the blessing after Mass).
-And finally, the priest omitted the Last Gospel.
After doing some reading, I learned that, in the early years of Vatican II, the Benedictines of Fontgombault had adopted some of the early reforms given in the 1965 Missal, even though they may have had the 1962 book on the altar. A letter from the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei in 1997 had confirmed that these were legitimate and licit uses within the 1962 Missal still; some for all Masses in general, others specifically for conventual Masses in Benedictine communities. There were further permissions granted to the Benedictines for using bidding prayers before the Offertory (after Oremus), and even for using prefaces from the 1970 Missal, though I didn't see them used at Clear Creek during my visit. For more information, you can see scans of the letter I mentioned on this entry in the Saint Bede Studio's blog.
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