november 2010

Presten jeg nylig siterte, som hadde feiret messen vendt mot Gud, skriver om du uilike rekasjoner på det han gjorde – egne reaksjoner, og rekasjoner fra menigheten:

Hans egne reaksjoner – presten ber sammen med menigheten til Gud:

I, however, wish I had not said Mass facing away from the congregation, and not because of the anger directed at me. I am a Catholic priest. I am used to people being angry with me. I wish I had not said Mass in what I believe to be the posture assumed by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, because it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my priestly life. You cannot imagine what it was like to say words like “we” and “our Father” and “us” while standing at the head of a congregation that was turned together in a physical expression of unity. No matter how one might argue to the contrary, it is impossible to say “we” while looking at 500 people and not be speaking to them.

The Mass is a prayer addressed to the Father, and despite our best intentions, we clergy address it to the congregation at whom we are looking. You cannot help it. The human face is a powerful thing. Last Saturday night I realized for the first time that I was part of a family of faith directed toward the same heavenly Father. I felt as if I was part of a church at prayer. It was not my job. It was my church. I never realized how very lonely it is to say Mass facing the people. I am up there looking at you. I am not part of you. For 13 or 14 minutes. You weren’t looking at me. We were looking at God. …

Menighetens reaksjoner – noen positive og noen negative:

After Mass, comments were varied. Some people loved it, most didn’t like it, some were infuriated. In particular I got angry fingers in the face, from someone who said that “the Pope had sent a letter to all priests telling them that they had to face the people.” How do you prove something that never happened? Rome has never said anything about having to face the people during Mass. One must do so only six times. It is one of the great mysteries of our times why, overnight, most of the altars in Catholic Churches were turned around.

Presten skriver også litt om hva tradisjoner har vært på dette området – ad orientem har vært det opprinnelige:

… According to the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, the custom of facing away from the people originated among the Frankish clergy in around 700 or 800 AD. I would like to know why they write this.

For two reasons, I doubt that the Mass was ever said completely facing the congregation. Facing east, which usually means facing away from the people is the usual posture in liturgical prayer of the Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic and Ethiopian traditions. It is still the custom in most of the Eastern rites, at least during the Eucharistic prayer. They have done this from time immemorial and still do. They wouldn’t have changed it just to accommodate the Frankish barbarians of the west, 700 years after Christ. This custom of congregation and clergy facing the same direction in prayer was universal until about 1967. The first Christians were Jews for a century after Pentecost, at least according to sociologist Rodney Stark. Facing a sacred direction and not a congregation was normal in the synagogue services from which the Mass developed. Orthodox Jews still face east, or more precisely toward Jerusalem, away from the congregation for much of the service. It is a natural gesture. …

En prest skriver slik om en messe han nylig feiret:

For the Offertory, Canon and Our Father I faced the altar, not the congregation. I said the opening prayers form the presider’s chair, where I remained for the readings. I wore a microphone as usual. I then read the Creed and the prayers of the faithful, went down to receive the offerings of bread and wine, and then went to the altar directly, not going around behind it. The deacon and I turned to the congregation at the prayer “Pray brethren..” I next turned to the congregation at the sign of peace and then again at the “Lord, I am not worthy…” After the distribution of Holy Communion I returned to the presider’s chair and finished the Mass as usual. The music was very simple, very little organ, mostly plain chant in English, some Latin used in the ordinary parts of the Mass, all prayers and readings in English. I had warned the congregation that I would do this one time only as part of the conference that we were having at the parish. I faced away from the congregation for about 14 of 55 minutes, all told.

I did it as an experiment. I suspect that the Council Fathers of Vatican II never envisioned Mass facing the people. I wanted to know what the Mass of Vatican II would really be like, some English, some Latin, Gregorian chant, unaccompanied singing and a balance of facing toward people when addressing them and facing the altar with them when addressing the Father. I think this is what is called in the rubrics of the Missal when it indicates that the priest should face the people six times during the Mass:

1)When giving the opening greeting (GIRM 124). [Norsk GIRM 1969 – nr. 86]
2)When giving the invitation to pray at the end of the offertory, «Pray brethren» (GIRM 146). [norsk nr. 107]
3)When giving the greeting of peace (GIRM 154). [norsk nr. 112]
4) When displaying the Host and Chalice before Communion and saying: «Behold the Lamb of God» (GIRM 157). [norsk nr. 115]
5) When inviting the people to pray before the post communion prayer (GIRM 165). [norsk nr. 122]
6)When giving the final blessing (Ordo Missae 141). [norsk nr. 142]

The fact that these rubrics exist, seems to assume that the priest is facing away from the people at some time during the liturgy.

(Etter tips fra Father Z.)

I St Andreaskirken i Køln sier tradisjonen at man har relikviene etter de sju hellige makkabeermartyrene – se bildet under.

I den tradisjonelle latinske messen blir de sju brødrene fra 2. Makkabeerbok fortsatt minnet (ekstra, ikke som hovedfeiring) hvert år 1. august. Og de regnes fortsatt som hellige av Kirken, selv om de ikke lenger (etter 1970) skal feires over hele verden – men jeg kunne ikke finne noe om dem på katolsk.no.

Disse martyrene feires fortsatt av de ortodokse kirkene, 1. august, og vi kan lese dette om dem:

They all suffered for the purity of the faith of Israel under King Antiochus, called by some «Epiphanos,» the «enlightened one» and by others «Epimanis» the «insane one.» Because of the great sins in Jerusalem and especially the vying over priestly authority and crimes committed during the occasion of this struggle, God permitted a great calamity on the Holy City. After that, Antiochus wanted by any means to impose upon the Jews the idolatry of the Hellenes in place of their faith in the one living God and he did everything toward this goal. Assisting Antiochus in his intention were some treacherous high priests and other elders of Jerusalem. On one occasion, King Antiochus himself came to Jerusalem and ordered that all Jews eat the meat of swine, contrary to the Law of Moses, for eating pork was an apparent sign that one has disowned the faith of Israel. The elder Eleazar, a priest and one of the seventy translators of the Old Testament into the Greek language [the Septuagint] would not partake of pork. Because of that, Eleazar was tortured and burned. Returning to Antioch, the king took with him the seven sons called the Maccabees and their mother Solomonia. The seven Maccabean brothers were called: Avim, Antonius, Eleazar, Gurius, Eusebon, Achim and Marcellus. Before the eyes of their mother, the wicked king tortured the sons, one by one, ripping the skin from their faces and, afterward, casting them into the fire. They all bravely endured torture and death but they did not disown their faith. Finally, when the mother saw her last son, the three-year old in the fire, she leaped into the flames and was consumed in the fire rendering her soul to God. They all suffered honorably for the faith in the one living God about one hundred eighty years before Christ.

Siste del av biskop Slatterys foredrag kommer her (men sannsynligvis komemr det mer i desembernummeret av bispedømmets tidsskrift). Han skriver her om at salmesang ikke er en del av den katolske messen, men at de hører hjemme i tidebønner og ulike former for andakter. Nå må det legges ting to ting; 1) at det er tillatt å synge salmer isteden for de oppsatte inngangsvers, offertoriumvers etc for hver messe, 2) og at salmene vi synger i Norge oftest er svært mye bedre enn sangene som synges i de fleste amerikanske menigheter. Slik skriver biskopen:

What I would like to propose is that we recover the sung introit (the fragment of a psalm with its antiphon, or response, sung while the celebrant and ministers enter the church and approach the altar at Mass.) For two generations, Catholics have been expected to sing an opening hymn at Mass, and, in many parishes, the faithful are regularly browbeaten to “stand up and greet this morning’s celebrant with hymn ‘so-and-so’,” which, depending upon the parish, might be taken from the red hymn book or the blue hymn book or the nicely disposable paperback missalette. So deeply has this “opening hymn mentality” shaped our consciousness that most Catholics would be astounded to hear me say that hymns have no real place in Mass.

Hymns belong in the Liturgy of the Hours and in the common devotions of the faithful, but the idea that the parish liturgy committee should sit down sometime early in the month and look through a hymn book, trying to find pretty hymns that haven’t been overdone in the past three or four months and that explore the themes of the Sunday Masses and that bring the people together as a singing community is an idea completely alien to the spirit of the Catholic liturgy.

The singing of hymns as Sunday worship was a Protestant innovation, better suited to their nonsacramental worship than to the Mass. And an opening hymn introduces – at the very inception of the sacred action – that element of creative busyness, which is, as we have seen, antithetical to the nature of salvation as a gift we receive from God. Sung introits have been an integral part of the Latin Rite, and remain so in the Extraordinary Form, where the schola, or choir, chants the more difficult antiphon, and the congregation sings the psalm. This gives the faithful both the chance to listen and respond, practicing, in effect, the basic elements of the Mass: listening and responding.

I sitt novembernummer fortsetter det katolske bispedømmet i Tulsa, Oklahoma, sin presetasjon av biskop Edward Slatterys foredrag om liturgien. Han skriver om hvor mye som (han mener) ble ødelagt i liturgien på 60-tallet, men også om håpet om forbedring:

Accepted by liturgists and seminary professors – and unfortunately fostered by priests, pastors and bishops – this discontinuity required a complete severing of anything that was not modern or which might be incapable of being recreated in a modern idiom. This was so even should it require the Church to surrender Her ancient liturgical patrimony and much of Her theological vocabulary.

… Ancient gestures like genuflections and ritual prayers like the grace before and after meals became a source of derision and the occasion of mockery. Though these gestures and prayers had offered generations of Catholics a concrete way to express their faith, the hermeneutic of discontinuity demanded their removal and the marginalization of those who held to the ancient way of doing things. In one area of concern after another, the rich patrimony of the past was discarded – not because it was incapable of expressing or articulating the Church’s teaching, but simply because it was “not new.” It had to come tumbling down so that we could remake it, re-create it in a fresh, modern idiom.

Overnight, or so it seemed, the paradigm shifted. The Mass was no longer important because it offers man the fullness of redemption, but because it offered people a chance to be creative and assertive. Our participation no longer depended upon our worthy reception of the mysteries offered the communicant, but upon our ceaseless activity.

In the new liturgical paradigm, we are busy producing our salvation, working hard at all our ministries, when, in truth, no work is ever required of us. Christ has done it all, and we need only receive His gift. … Today, I would like to suggest one simple change by which we might begin to recover the sense that the liturgy is something we receive, rather than something we create. I do not propose this as the most important or essential change toward this end, but merely as one change, one step, one movement away from the chaos of created liturgies toward the proper vision of the council. …

…. Yet there are changes afoot and reason to hope. The introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal, now definitely set for the First Sunday of Advent of next year, gives me reason to anticipate a new beginning. Faithful to the spirit of the Latin text and with an accurate translation into a consciously sacred style of English, the new Missal points to a rediscovered seriousness in the way America celebrates her liturgy and perhaps a greater appreciation, as well, of the elements of liturgy that have been discarded these past 40 years.

Perhaps with this new seriousness, and given the need to compose new chant melodies to accompany the new translations, this may well be the time when liturgists will begin discussing the meaning of a received liturgy; when composers might make their first attempts to set these antiphons to a simple English plain song and when publishers might begin to produce worthy and dignified liturgical books.

This new beginning is certainly a way of building up the Kingdom of God. I hope that we shall begin it well.