23 April 2010

Next Sunday

According to the Roman Rite as it existed before Pius XII (I am naturally refering to my handy copy of the Saint Lawrence Press ORDO), next Sunday we celebrate S Mark. Indeed, in the abortive 1928 Prayer Book the same held good; 1928 took its provisions for Occurence and Concurrence basically from the current Roman Rite. (Prayer Book Measures in 1965 and 1968 also made it possible to oberve S Mark instead of the Sunday.)

But there was under thjose older rules a "commemoration" of Sunday; that is to say, the Collect, Secret, and Postcommunion of Sunday were said after the collect etc. of the Saint. This sort of thing went out with Bugnini; it became accepted orthodoxy that you only have one theme at each Mass. This 'Enlightenment' Puritanism swept aside a whole culture, common to Byzantine East as well as to Roman West, of expressing diachronic and synchronic sympathies within the same liturgy. Laurence Hemming has called this 'reform' into question: rightly.

But you would also have had a third collect - a second commemoration - as well as that of the Sunday. A commemoration of the Rogation; because S Mark's Day by ancient Western custom had a Rogation Procession, with Litanies, attached to it. So the prayers from that Mass got a look-in too. Incidentally, you didn't say the conclusion ("Through ...") at the end of each collect; you said it the end of the first; then said again Let Us Pray, followed by the second collect without its conclusion; then (without repeating Let Us Pray) the third collect with its conclusion. (Even earlier forms of the Roman Rite encouraged even more commemorations, but required them to add up to an uneven number).

At the end of next Sunday's Mass of S Mark, the Last Gospel would be read from the Sunday, rather than from the Prologue of S John's Gospel. You did this as a mark of repect to certain important Sundays and Ferias when they had been obscured by a Saintly festival. Thus two important parts of the Sunday Mass: Collect and Gospel - were not lost.

Next ... I'd better finish this later.

2 comments:

Joshua said...

And of course Down Under (in the Commonwealth of Australia and the Realm of New Zealand), the 25th of April is ANZAC Day - by rescript of the SCR, one Requiem may be said on this day in the EF form (otherwise St Mark, whatever of Sunday); whereas in the OF, the special ANZAC Day Mass is shunted aside by the Sunday. Oh well, it can always feature in the sermon and bidding prayers...

Joshua said...

Numero Deus impari gaudet (Virgil, Eclogue 8, 75)