- Structure of the Mass
- Overview
- Entry and Preparation
- Mass of the Catechumens
- Mass of the Faithful
- Propers
- The Kalendar
- Kalendar
- How the Kalendar Teaches the Faith
- CEREMONIAL
- Reason for Ceremonial
- Glossary
- Commentary on the Mass
- Freeze-Frame Mass
- Hymns, psalms, & Canticles
- Hymn Singing
: This long middle-brow study of the Mass is nearly finished. I've put these chapters up for friends who've asked to see how it's going. Part Three, on the Offertory, is written, and should be up in a little while. Let me know if any links don't work, or if you have any comments or corrections. Click on the preface, or on any of the chapters (lettering or picture), to get into the text. Your computer will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open things up; you're very unlikely not to have it, but if you are that benighted, click here to download a free copy. I often to refer to the text of Mass; here it is in Latin (that is, in the Tridentine Rite, with my literal translation), and here in English (as it is celebrated at Ascension and St Agnes).
The Epic of God
or,
The Freeze-Frame Mass
being an account of the Eucharistic Mysteries
of the Christian Church,
described historico-empirico-polemically
and at enormous length,
by the Rev'd Dr Richard Major
(rector@stmarysi.com)
© 1999-2006
PREFACE. "This is a book about the Most Holy Mass, as it has been celebrated throughout the Western church for a thousand years, and as it is still celebrated in that remarkably traditional parish of Ascension and St Agnes ...."
Part One: Rites of Entry
i. ASPERGES. "The organ stops, the bell rings, and out come a posse of men strangely dressed, carrying glittering things, walking in very straight lines. They whirl in energetically from the sacristy (or dressing room)."
ii. PREPARATION. This rite is "undertaken by those about to step up to Christ's table, and act as waiters and agents as He lays Himself on it. The Preparation used to occur... as a private devotion in the sacristy before the altar party appeared."
iii. CENSING." Having arrived at the stone block where God reveals Himself and feeds us, the ministers of the Mass are about to hallow it: to honour its holiness. And the mechanism for doing this... is smoke."
iv. INTROIT. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
v. FACING THE ALTAR. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
vi. NOT FACING THE ALTAR. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
vii. KYRIE. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
viii. GLORIA. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
ix. MUSICAL SETTING. Because of the Incarnation we dare to sing to God as if we were ourselves angelic. Supreme musical artistry in the Mass is thus not decoration or taste: it's implied by the Christian creed.
x. KALENDAR. The Earth goes round the Sun. The Moon goes round the Earth. These are not secrets, but you'd never guess from the usual calm or distracted manner of mankind that such high truths have been divulged to us.
xi. COLLECT. The celebrant is now about to sum up the prayer of the Mass in a single collect. The words are set for him according to the season, pertinent to the precise point in the Church year and to the cycles of the year.
xii. INTERLUDE ABOUT WORDS. Let us pause and loll. Let us reflect what we are about before we get lost in contemplating the details of the "Ministry of the Word," the lectionary part of the Synaxis. What is this whole thing called?
Part Two: The Word
xiii. WHAT THE BIBLE ISN'T. The idea that the Bible is a single long statement dictated by God to human secretaries, who flawlessly copied it all down; that the Bible is a simple, easily understood historical, theological and moral manifesto of what God has done and demands of us; all that is lunacy.
xiv. WHAT THE BIBLE IS. The Church takes the Bible, that extremely diverse and irregular heap of wrotings, and uses them in her services. Beginning at whatever scripture lies to hand, she preaches to us Jesus.
xv. HOW LECTIONS WORK. Three small sections of the Bible -- Lesson, Epistle, and Gospel -- are read each Sunday by three different people. The three readings, even if originally drab, make lovely listening because we hear them coated in gold.
xvi. LESSON AND EPISTLE. At the quietest, most understated moment in the Mass, there is no ceremony going on at all. A member of the congregation comes to the lectern and reads from the Old Testament, the first of the three lections that are read at each High Mass.
xvii. GOSPEL. The Gospel is the center and climax of the ministry of the Word, and a huge party of people--deacon holding the silver-covered Gospel book, subdeacon, master of ceremonies, boat-boy, thurifer, acolytes, and crucifer--strain to get on with it.
xviii. WHY A CREED? We have come to the chilling point in the Mass known as the Creed: a thing of glory and a mark of shame; an exultant blare of trumpets, a tumble of exhilarated claims and a medicine gives to herself every week.
xix. TEXT OF THE CREED. CREDO IN UMUM DEUM, cries the Celebrant, to be joined by the choir and congregation reciting words that tax our intellects, our imaginations, and even our patience. Now the rite insists on the intellect's dancing.
xx. THE CREDAL EPIC. The Holy Ghost uses our family flaw of quarrelsomeness to utter His truth: He employes our fault in the process of discovering wisdom. What else could He use, since God has committed Himself and us to the dangerous experiment of cooperation.
xxi. THE FEEL OF THE CREED. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
xxii. SERMON. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
xxiii. INTERLUDE: BEING THE MAGDALEN. The gesture was stupefying, impressive and extreme. Even Christ Himself was immediately impressed. "Her sins are forgiven for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."
Part Three: The Offertory
xxiv. OFFERTORY BEGUN. When the preacher says Amen! to show that he has finished his stuff, it is as if an ant-next has been kicked: the whole body of the faithful erupt into motion.
xxv. OFFERTORY CONTINUES. An obvious puzzle for anyone who sitnesses the physical setting of wine and bread on the altar is that such a gorgious ceremony is made of what is, after all, a pragmatic matter of laying the table for supper.
xxvi. BREAD. Christianity, being the religion of the Incarnation, is also the religion of incongruity. Infinitely large matters turn on very small ones. Everyday matters -- like bread -- work the motion of God in the world.
xxvii. WINE. Because God the Son let Himself be torn for us, and because we taste that life-giving death as wine, Christians are naturally inclined to be enthusiastic about wine, regarding it as one of God's best gifts to us.
xxviii. CORPORAL. The consecration of bread and wine as divine Body and Blood always happens on clean white linen cloth -- a repetition of the shroud on which the Body once lay before being bundled up and stowed in a tomb.
xxix. CHALICE & PATEN. The table was not of silver, the chalice was not of gold in which Christ gave His disciples to drink, and yet everything there was precious and truly fit to inspire awe.
xxx. OFFERING BREAD. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
xxxi. OFFERING WINE. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio.
xxxii. OFFERTORY COMPLETED. That grand prayer, Offerimus tibi Domine, being complete, the
celebrant softly makes the sign of the Cross with the chalice and puts
it down, in the middle of the corporal, behind the large Host which
lies at the front, nearest the altar edge.
Part Four
TO BE CONTINUED. This is a work in progress — a rough working draft that is still incomplete. The author would be grateful for any specific comments or suggestions and — best of all — objections and corrections. The draft is also available at the web site of St. Mary's Church, Staten Island, where the author served as rector.
