Questions the catechism didn't answer : 50 catechetical instructions on the liturgy of the church.




Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2016

https://archive.org/details/questionscatechiOOfisc



Queötionö

tke (^ateckiöm

zDidnt (zAnövoer

50 CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTIONS

on

THE LITURGY OF THE CHURCH

by

Dr. Balthasar Fischer

^ke liturgical <*Pre^«>
I



Questions the Catechism Didn't Answer is the authorized English transla-
tion of Was Nicht im Katechismus Stand by Dr. Balthasar Fischer, published
by Paulinus Verlag, Trier, Germany.

Nihil obstat

:

Paschal Botz, O.S.B., S.T.D., Censor deputatus. Imprimi
potest: © Baldwin Dworschak, O.S.B., Abbot of St. John’s Abbey. Im-
primatur: © Peter W. Bartholome, D.D., Bishop of St. Cloud. August
26, 1957.

Copyright 1958 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota.

ii



CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION v

THE HOUSE OF GOD 1

HOLY SIGNS 13

HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS . . 24

THE SACRIFICE OF MASS .... 57

THE SACRAMENTS 91

iii



IV



INTRODUCTION

There is no longer a shortage nowadays of learned books

on the liturgy. The educated Catholic knows how their num-

ber has grown during the last thirty years and what a precious

amount of new information about the divine services of the

Church they have brought to light. But the simple Christian

who would want to gain a deeper knowledge of divine wor-

ship (happily there are ever more of them) would not be

served by these works. He needs plain lessons in Christian

worship that translate for him into simple and bold language

the wisdom of the learned works. Such popular lessons in

Christian worship this booklet wishes to present.

One would expect that every Catholic had acquired the

necessary knowledge about divine services in catechism class.

Yet, although valuable and solid, the catechisms of our youth

fell very short on this important point. Even catechisms are

children of their time, and during the first three decades of

our century the interest in matters liturgical was surprisingly

limited. Few suspected that a revival of the liturgical spirit

would come over the Church during the first half of our

century, thanks to the three great Popes by the name of Pius.

Now many whose hearts are awake, also among ordinary
Christians, suddenly realize that much can be learned from

the liturgy that was not in the catechism.

For these the following fifty lessons about the liturgy are

intended. Beginning with the body or nave of the church, the

first five chapters describe sacred places, five are devoted to

liturgical gestures, fifteen to holy seasons and the central

mystery of all liturgy, the celebration of the holy Eucharist;



and the circle closes with five lessons on Baptism and five on

the other sacraments. In each case this question is put to what

has become customary and well-known: Why is it so and what
is its lesson ? Instead of thoughtlessly accepting current, super-

ficial opinions, our purpose is to penetrate into what lies be-

neath the exterior of Catholic worship.

These instructions first appeared separately in the diocesan

paper Paulinus of Trier and were then, upon request, revised

and published in the booklet Was Nicht im Katechismus
Stand.

Balthasar Fischer

vi



^ke ctlouöe o
}
^ocl

1 ... THE NAVE OF THE CHURCH

When formerly, in my religious instructions to children, I
came to speak of the house of God, I usually asked the ques-

tion: “Tell me, children, you have heard people speaking about

the nave of the church; that the pulpit stands in the main

nave, the confessional in the side nave. What do they mean?”
Of course, we more commonly use the words main aisle and
side aisle, but nave and aisle here mean the same thing. But

why speak of nave at all? The word “nave” literally means
ship or boat. That’s a strange use of the word, don’t you think ?

The church does not float on water, surely. Well, I shall tell
you.

The early Christians, in speaking of the nave of the church,
were thinking of Lake Gennesareth and of St. Peter’s boat in

which our Lord was often together with the small group of

His disciples. Isn’t it exactly similar in the house of God, they

wished to say, that within its walls the Lord is with His fol-

lowers amid the waves of world history? That is why we are
so happy within this house, more so than in any other in the

whole town or city; why we annually celebrate its dedication
with great festivity as God’s temple (if the building has been

consecrated)

.

The Lord is actually present among us in this nave of the
church as He once was with the apostles in the boat on Lake
Gennesareth. And sometimes it happens to us, as it happened
to them, that strong waves rage about our boat and we turn

1



2 THE HOUSE OF GOD

suppliantly to our great Fellow-passenger. He now too, as
then, seems to be asleep. Silently and seemingly unconcerned

about our needs, He dwells on the altar and in the tabernacle.
I believe that if we did not know His answer in advance, we
would do as the apostles did and approach Him amid the
raging storm, calling to Him: “Master, does it not concern
you that we are perishing?”
But we do not want to be of little faith. We know that He

who ever comes to us in our boat and sails with us, though
He be the most calm and seemingly unimportant of our
companions, is still Lord over all storms and of all world

history. At the right moment He will extend His hand and
there will be “a great calm.”

See how a dead piece of old picture language begins to
live and breathe! Only we must have a little patience, we must
stop and reflect till the light comes. It can well be imagined

how the eyes of the little ones in school, still living in their
picture world, brightened up at my illustrations. And more
so as I explained further that in this nave or boat of the church,

fish are being caught, yes, human fishes, just as our Lord
told St. Peter. They are caught with hooks, one at a time,

and occasionally there is a jerk on the line and in the heart of

the fisherman when he hears: “My last confession was so
and so many years ago.” With nets, too, they are caught, many
at a time, with the bait of God’s mighty words coming from

pulpit or altar.

For these reasons we speak of the nave of the church, be-
cause in the church our Lord really comes to us time and

again and stays with us bodily as once with His disciples on

the lake; and therefore we sail with Him confidently amid
violent storms. Even when He appears sound asleep, we
know and believe what was already said in the Book of
Psalms: “He neither slumbers nor sleeps who guards Israel.”



2 ... THE TWELVE CROSSES ALONG THE CHURCH
WALLS

Few of those, I am sure, who Sunday after Sunday come to
a consecrated church (only such have the twelve crosses),

ever notice the little crosses painted along its interior side

walls. Never have they heard a reference to this decoration,

much less do they know what it is for. But on one particular
Sunday of the year in such a church, the twelve crosses can

hardly go unnoticed (if all is done right). I refer to the

Sunday on which the solemn dedication of the church is

annually celebrated. According to beautiful, ancient custom,

a candle then burns before each of the crosses as part of the

festive commemoration of the day on which the bishop

solemnly blessed or baptized this house of God.

It is not accidental that candles are lit at those twelve

places. For the first time they were burning there on that

blessed occasion when the bishop with cope and mitre
solemnly stepped down from the altar and anointed the
church walls on those very spots with holy chrism, just as

a newly baptized person is anointed on the crown of his head.

During the ceremony the choir chanted hymns about the
heavenly Jerusalem, how it is adorned as the Bride of the
Lamb and knows not the darkness of night. If you are
familiar with your Bible, you will recall where the choir

found those words—in the Apocalypse of St. John, in the
chapter describing the heavenly Jerusalem. The house of

3



4 THE HOUSE OF GOD

God should be a part of heaven, a reflection and image of
the heavenly City. Read through that chapter again (ch. 21

of the Apocalypse) from beginning to end, and you will see

why just twelve places on God’s house are anointed. For
there it says of the heavenly City which the apostle saw in

vision : “The wall of the city has twelve foundation stones, and

on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”

Now you know why the bishop anoints those twelve spots
along the wall of the church, the image of the heavenly

Jerusalem. They should remind us of the twelve apostles;

that is why the crosses are called “Apostle crosses” and the
candles “Apostle candles.” All the joy that comes to us in this

earthly house of God and all the happiness—please God!

—

we may one day enjoy in heaven, rest “on the foundation of
the apostles,” and flow from the faith which the Twelve

have faithfully handed down to us from the lips of the Master
and firmly sealed by their martyrdom.

Really, this significant adornment on the church walls, if we
understand it correctly, is a bit of the ancient veneration for

the apostles. But over and above, the crosses want to tell

us something more, which our Christian brethren in the

East feel more deeply than we, that every Catholic church,

no matter how small or poor, is part of the eternal Jerusalem,
a forecourt to heaven.

That same chapter of the Apocalypse quoted above tells

how the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem no longer need
the sun or the moon, for “the Lamb is the lamp thereof.” Isn’t
this more or less anticipated every time the same “Lamb”

comes into our midst in a hidden form and we say to Him:
“Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have
mercy on us”? But also when the holy Sacrifice is over the

“Lamb” remains present on the altar, reserved in the taber-

nacle, a living echo of the Eucharistic celebration. Hence very



MARTYRS7 RELICS IN THE ALTAR 5

fittingly, during our visits to the Blessed Sacrament, the sanc-

tuary lamp reminds us of those consoling words of the

Apocalypse: “The Lamb is the lamp thereof.”

3 ... WHY MARTYRS7 RELICS IN THE ALTAR?

Have you ever witnessed the consecration of a church?

Yes? Well, then, one thing you have not forgotten is that it

lasted a long time. But despite its length, I am sure you
felt it was well worth attending. It is indeed a magnificent

ceremony, stirring in parts and inspiring throughout.

One of the highlights (remember?) was the procession
that bore martyrs’ relics into the new church. The vestments
for this were, appropriately, red; the singing festive, trium-

phant. Down the center aisle the procession moved, and on
into the sanctuary until it reached the altar. There, in a little

“sepulchre” ground into the horizontal slab (mensa), the

relics were reverently interred.

That the altar should contain martyrs’ relics is an ancient

rule in the Church. St. Ambrose, the great fourth-century

bishop of Milan, knew and honored it. What led to this
peculiarly Christian custom, and what is its message?

The custom is, clearly, an outgrowth of another practice
that was universally followed in the early Church. On the
anniversary of a martyr’s death, friends and relatives accom-

panied by a priest came to his grave to offer a commemora-
tive Mass. On these occasions the coffin served as altar, or in
lieu of that, an altar was improvised over the remains.



6 THE HOUSE OF GOD

You can imagine what an impression this must have made
on the bystanders, the more so because of the times. Persecu-

tion was forever in progress, or threatening. The holy martyr
had met death for his faith. This was his grave. All present

realized only too well that the same test might at any moment
overtake each of them. The group was not very large, to
avert suspicion. Often the destination was one of those sub

terranean burial chambers which may still be seen in the
Roman catacombs, where no sun came through from the
outside and one had to make his way by candlelight.
What thoughts crowded their minds as they stood encircling

the holy martyr, and in union with the priest offered the

holy Sacrifice from an altar over his grave! Or rather, how
spoke the holy martyr to them? For, speak he did, in the

silence of their hearts.
“
‘Be imitators of me as I am of Christ,’ ”

he began, echoing the Apostle (i Cor. n:i). “As for me,” he

continued, “I followed the Lord Christ, even to death; and

now, in recompense, I share His glory, too, the glory of His

resurrection which shall appear when He comes again in
power and majesty. For this I have not myself to thank; no,

I thank only the Lord’s boundless mercy. The same eternal
crown awaits you. In the Sacrifice of the Lord’s death, here

offered from my grave, is found the way and the pledge.
Christ came to glory through death. Die with Christ daily,

and never cease to die. Then shall you also live with Christ
and follow in His glory.”

As the group returned home, the experience at the grave

went with them, not soon to be forgotten. No homily from
the priest had been necessary; the saint’s mute exhortation was

quite enough. And because the experience could so rouse and
strengthen the Christian soul, one did not wish to lose the

opportunity when, under the Emperor Constantine, persecu-

tion came to an end and the cubicles in homes and ceme-



MARTYRS7 RELICS IN THE ALTAR 7

teries yielded to public edifices of worship. In fact, as the

nations thronged into the Church, the memory of the martyrs
became, if anything, more necessary. Accordingly, wherever

possible the churches that now sprang up were erected over
the site of a martyr’s grave, and the altar was located above

or near the sacred relics. Visitors to Rome will know what
I mean. There, in the Churches of St. Peter, St. Lawrence

outside the Walls, St. Clement, and many others, they have
seen the small crypt near the main altar, called the “Con-

fession,” a small vestibule usually glowing with vigil lights

in memory of the holy martyr (s).
Naturally, not every church could be built over a martyr’s

grave, since in some localities none existed. But the idea was

maintained. If the grave of a martyr was not available, at least

one could have a martyr’s relics. And this is how our custom
began. In solemn procession the relics of a martyr were

brought from his grave to the newly-erected church. The
procession formed outside the church, from where it moved
inside and down the aisle to the altar, just as it is done today.
The why and the wherefore of relics in the altar should

now be clear. The custom reaches back, if not to the earliest,
still to very early times, and the reason stems from a funda-

mental dogma of Christianity. All Christian life is a martyr-

dom, or it is nothing. Every Christian must have the soul of

a martyr, must immolate himself on a cross. This is the

message of the relics, the message of the Mass itself. Without

self-immolation prayer and praise, however “liturgical,” can

become like “sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal” (i Cor.

13:1). To die with Christ, that makes the Christian. Die with
Christ to live with Him . So speak the holy martyrs every
where, from their graves and from all altars.



4 ... THE ALTAR COVERED BY WHITE LINENS

One should think that for the altar the most precious silks
or gold brocade would be barely good enough. How then does
it happen that the Church so strongly insists on the altar

being covered with linen cloths (and even three of them) ?

The answer sounds quite simple, and yet many Christians
no longer know what is really involved. The altar is a table,
and mothers the world over have ever covered their tables

with linen cloths. Why then should Mother Church not do
the same with her holy table ? The Christian house of God is,
before all else, a second cenacle; in the center of the cenacle

stands the holy “table of the Lord,” covered in white.

Indeed, the altar in our church is more than just a table of

the Last Supper; it also represents the rock of Calvary. It

stands before us as the sacred place of Sacrifice and as the

table of the sacred Banquet. Much as it reminds us in several
ways of the Sacrifice (its elevated position, the crucifix, the

candles, the relics), it derives its essential form not only from

the Sacrifice, but also from the Banquet which flows from the

Sacrifice. It is a table. To this day our Christian brethren in
the East have no other word for the altar than “the holy table”;

and also among us the altar plate is referred to in the Latin
term of mensa, which means “table.”

In former days the faithful realized more clearly than we
do that the altar is a table. First of all, in those days it was

covered in white before their eyes at each holy Mass (just as

8



THE ALTAR COVERED BY WHITE LINENS 9

is done on Good Friday). But what was more important, the

faithful were permitted, at least in some places, to approach

the holy table and there receive from the hands of the celebrant

the sacred Food and drink of the chalice. How could they
have forgotten that the altar is a table! Later on for various

reasons the custom of the laity receiving holy Communion
directly from the altar was changed; in general, they were to

be kept outside the sanctuary altogether. A substitute table
was arranged for; we give it the unhappy name of “com-
munion rail.” Nevertheless, it represents the altar table; it is

the “table of the Lord” and therefore, like the altar in former

days, it is covered with a white cloth.

The most important part of the altar is, therefore, not that

which rises vertically above it. “We have a beautiful altar in
our church,” the children say; “there are many beautiful angels
on it.” They think—and many adult Catholics share their
false notion—that the reredos (the upright ornamental panels
behind the altar) is the main thing and the mensa is merely

an adjunct; for the priest needs something whereon to put

the chalice! There are altars that give the impression that the

architect or the pastor whose wishes were followed had a

similar idea. In reality the very contrary is true. The rear
panel is not essential to the altar; it can be dispensed with, as

it was missing in the oldest, and is fortunately also wanting

with many of our newer altars. But the mensa can never be
wanting; an altar without mensa is simply no altar.

To bring home this point to the faithful it is perhaps good
that the ancient manner of celebrating holy Mass is now
permitted more often by our bishops, the manner which our

Holy Father makes use of regularly when offering the holy
Sacrifice on the high altar of St. Peter’s, namely, the priest

does not stand in front of the altar with his back to the

people, but behind the altar, facing the people. I do not, of



10 THE HOUSE OF GOD

course, agree with those who maintain that this is the only
correct way; that it is not proper for the priest to have his

back turned constantly to the people who offer the Mass with
him. The one at the head of a delegation appearing before a
public official also has his back turned to those who came with
him, and we see nothing improper about that.
Yet I think the other way should also be followed occasion-

ally, since it has the advantage of impressing upon us more

clearly that the heavenly Lord (whom the priest represents)
is come “to keep the Passover” with us, inviting us to His

sacred Banquet. All of us Christians should become more

conscious that it is not simply for the fulfillment of our

“Sunday duty,” as we so thoughtlessly use the word, but for
sharing a festive Banquet that we are invited. How pitiful if
one of the invited guests should think: What is said or
shown at this Banquet, I will listen to or look at, but I have

no intention of eating. Truly, it is hard to understand how
so many Catholics can behave that way Sunday after Sunday
—except for the one Sunday of the year on which they make
their “Easter duty.”

5 ... THE CHOIR

Perhaps you never realized it—we are so thoughtless in the
use of words—but the same word is used for the sanctuary of
the church as for that elevated platform, usually at the rear

of the church, reserved for the singers and the organ. And you
may even hear the same word used in a third sense, when the



THE CHOIR 11

priest announces from the pulpit that next Thursday evening

the “choir” will have singing practice. Here the word “choir”

no longer designates the place for the clergy or for the chanters,

but the body of singers themselves, as when we speak of a

“men’s choir” or of a “choir of angels.”

Is it merely accidental that the Church uses the same word

in these three different meanings? Hardly. There must be

some reason behind it. We want to get to the bottom of this,
and perhaps it will prove worthwhile.

Scholars explain the matter this way: the word “choir”

comes from the Greek; it refers to theatre life and denotes a

group that appears on the stage, speaking and singing together

alongside the principal actors. In this meaning the Church in

the early Middle Ages adopted the term, applying it to those

who sang in common at the divine services, namely, the
clergy in the sanctuary because they carried out the Mass

chant insofar as it had simple melodies. For at that time

already it was, unfortunately, no longer possible for the con-

gregation to sing more than certain short responses and per-

haps the Sanctus, since the people had become too unfamiliar

with Latin. Soon it became customary to give the name “choir”
to the place occupied by the clergy in the sanctuary.

From the beginning there always existed a small group of
especially trained singers within the large choir of the clergy

who rendered the more difficult chants, the so-called schola
cantorum. Gradually this group became known as the “choir,”
and when it separated itself from its rightful place among the
clergy near the altar and sought out a new place as far as
possible away from it, the name “choir” went along. So the
loft in the rear of the church, where this backing-up movement

ended, we call to this day “choir,” because the choir of singers
(now entirely from the laity) is located there. Quite properly

one could have stopped calling the sanctuary a “choir,” but



12 THE HOUSE OF GOD

fortunately this was not done, and there remains, at least in

the name, a last reminder that the church choir has some

connection with the altar.

At this point the answer to our inquiry seems to have an

important lesson for us. Choir service in church is altar service,

originally performed near the altar and by clerics in liturgical

vestments. Something of that holy reverence and recollected-

ness which marks the choir service of young clerics should

also be reflected by members of church choirs. It were desirable

and certainly more correct, if it could be provided, that the

singers have a place (preferably concealed) near the altar.

Some modern churches have already introduced this arrange-
ment; but where this is not possible, those who provide the
singing in our churches should be keenly aware that their

service is service at the altar and even from their more distant

place they must take part in the action at the altar with a

greater living devotion than the rest of the faithful.



c^loly <Signö

6 ... FOLDING OF HANDS AT DIVINE SERVICES

From the time of our first and happiest religious instruction

at mother’s knee, we took it for granted that our hands must

be folded in prayer—together, finger against finger, or with
fingers intertwined. And ever since our first childhood visits
to church it has seemed only natural to keep our hands folded

in church and during divine services. But although you have

done this thousands of times, and still do it daily at morning

and evening prayers, at meals and in church, I am willing to
wager that you really never asked yourself why it is done.

Actually, the answer is not so simple. At divine service

itself, during holy Mass, you can observe how the priest does
the very opposite during the most important prayers; he

extends his hands. Why then do we fold them? Our fore-
fathers who gradually introduced the custom must have had
good reasons.

I believe they wanted to inscribe a very basic principle on

our hearts without which there* can be no prayer or divine

service, the principle that if man wants to pray and share in
the liturgy, he must first “recollect himself” and come to rest

interiorly. Hands symbolize work, and thus also our human
restlessness that is constantly pursuing us, early and late. By
folding your hands you mean to say: It is quitting time, now
let all be silent, the noise of wor\and the clamor of my restless
imagination.

13



14 HOLY SIGNS

This basic principle you may have experienced often enough
already. A mother who during the meal prayers must fuss
and bustle around among pots and dishes “prays” with her
lips perhaps, but her heart is not wholly in it. If a flea pesters

you on Sunday morning and gets you nettled, then all your

praying at Mass becomes choppy; your mind strays in all

directions, far from what your lips are saying. Was it not
for the very purpose of attaining rest and quiet before prayer

that our Lord said : “When you pray, go into your room, close
the door, and pray to your Father in secret”?

Shut the door! Don’t you feel that this is why you fold your
hands, finger linked firmly to finger ? Is it not as if you wanted

to lock up your whole being so that nothing disturbs you when
you now begin to hold conversation with the God of your
heart, when you try to participate most intimately in the Sacri-
fice of redemption? All must be quiet about you and within

you that you may hear the Lord’s voice; it does not shout aloud
in the streets; it is soft, silent as the growth of His flowers

and the course of His stars.

Something else besides the basic principle about “quitting

time” is meant when you fold your hands, finger against
finger, at prayer and during divine services. There is some-

thing mysteriously solemn, something noble about the picture

of two human hands folded together and raised in prayer, be
they the small, tender hands of a child at night prayers, or the

mature and honest hands of an adult—like those immortalized
by Albrecht Dürer. Do you know what that is? The ancient
idea associated with this gesture was that one wished to place

his hands into the hands of God, as it were, in token of sur-

render.

Now that is man’s highest nobility, to surrender himself
completely and patiently into God’s paternal hands. In this

manner the vassal knelt before his liege lord, and still today



WE KNEEL WHEN WORSHIPPING 15

the newly ordained priest at the close of the ordination cere-

mony kneels before the bishop, his folded hands laid between
the hands of the bishop, as if to say: Lead me wherever you
wish, and I will follow. Here the folded hands imply ä

second basic principle of prayer. Whoever desires to pray

must surrender himself into God's hands; no one can lift

himself to heaven by tugging at his own shoelaces. He must
say: Lead me wherever You wish, and I will follow, for You
are our Father. It means placing your folded hands between

God’s fatherly clasp; and when assisting at holy Mass you do
this most perfectly in the Name and spirit of Him who said:
“Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt!”
We fold our hands, therefore, at prayer and during divine

services because all prayer and worship come under a double

law, the law of separation and the law of self-surrender into

the providential hands of a loving Father.

7 ... WE KNEEL WHEN WORSHIPPING

There are those who think that kneeling is essential to pray-
ing. Which is, of course, a bit exaggerated. The most sacred
prayers the priest recites during holy Mass are said standing at

the altar; and formerly the faithful also stood about him (in the

Canon of the Mass they are still referred to as circumstantes

,

i.e., those standing about). In recent years sound thinkers

have pointed out" how certain prayers cannot be said properly
in a kneeling position. There is something so festively joyous

about them, e.g., the Gloria or the Preface, that one must

pray or hear them standing.



16 HOLY SIGNS

And how about family liturgy ? It is an old custom in Chris-
tian families to recite the table prayers sitting down; and if

you have taken part in this you will know there is nothing
irreverent about it; in fact, the action has its own special
dignity when father, mother, and children take their places
around the family table and before beginning the meal fold

their hands in common prayer. Nowhere else can one sense so
clearly what family life means. And when considering silent,
interior prayer, many a person will have to admit that his
most fervent and sincere prayers were not made either kneel-

ing or sitting or standing, but when lying sick abed.
Nevertheless, it is proper that kneeling be part of Catholic

worship, and that it hold a special rank among the bodily
postures at divine services. Why is this so? Not out of mere
custom, I am sure. There must be stronger, intrinsic reasons
at work than are seen at first glance. Kneeling is the bodily

expression of a spiritual attitude essential to prayer, that of

humility. What the soul must do at prayer, no matter what
posture is taken, that the body does when you pray kneeling;
it makes itself small; it says, as it were: O God, I know I am
as nothing before Thee. I am a poor sinner, have mercy on me!
This explains the high dignity of kneeling. What the kneel-

ing body says, and what the soul, set mysteriously in motion

by the body, says after it or should say, is the underlying senti-

ment of all prayer and worship, the very same our Lord was

inculcating when He held up as a model the publican and his
prayer: “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
At no time should we feel more definitely conscious of our

sinfulness and unworthiness than when our Lord comes to

us “bodily.” Does it not say already in the Gospels about the

apostles, about Peter and Thomas, that at such moments they

fell down on their knees! Since earliest times, therefore, the
Church insists that we bend our knees as the Lord comes in



STRIKING THE BREAST AT DIVINE WORSHIP 17

the Eucharist, and that we remain kneeling in His presence.

Where holy Communion can still be carried to the sick in a
public manner (the practice is hardly possible in the United

States because of the danger of irreverence to the Blessed

Sacrament), it is always very impressive to see adult Catholics

fall on their knees to express how small they feel before Him
to whom the Church sings in the Gloria: “Thou alone art
most high.”

But even when there is no direct connection with Eucha-

ristic adoration, the kneeling posture (if it is proper and re-

spectful) exercises a wholesome, educative influence. Take

another glance at family liturgy—so much depends upon it!
Praying while sitting at table, as we said, is right and good;
but conscientious parents will insist that their children say

morning and night prayers on their knees, and not, as some

do, at the breakfast table or after going to bed. All life long

the child will profit by the disciplinary effects of proper

posture at prayer, when the body expresses the chiefest thing in
all prayer, no matter in what position it is made : O God, I am
as nothing before Thee!

8 . . . STRIKING THE BREAST AT DIVINE WORSHIP

Whenever I reflect on the Christian custom of striking one’s

breast, an image comes to mind which I must have seen

somewhere in my childhood days. In a lonely cave a hermit
is kneeling—it may have been St. Jerome—and with a piece
of rock he strikes his naked breast. Here can actually be seen,



18 HOLY SIGNS

transferred into stark reality, what we want to indicate by
our innocent gesture of striking the breast. Whoever steps

before the living God with an honest, upright heart loses the
mask he ordinarily wears in the company of men. With

painful clearness he suddenly becomes aware that he is a sinner,

unworthy to appear in His all-holy Presence. The pain, boring
deep into the hermit’s heart, sought bodily expression. With

the great saints of all ages, it expressed itself in rigorous self-

discipline and penance for what we would call “little sins.”
We weaklings, conscious of our great sins, want to combine

with our prayers at least the symbolic act of self-discipline:

striking one’s breast. It is not, therefore, by mere chance

that this ceremony is generally prescribed only when there
is question of guilt: at the mea culpa of the Confiteor; in our

cry for mercy from the depths of our sinfulness at the Agnus

Dei during Mass and at the close of litanies; and when
acknowledging our unworthiness before approaching the

Lord’s table.

Striking the breast is an insignificant sign, often carelessly

performed; but like folding the hands and bending the knees,

it expresses a basic attitude in prayer and Christian life, one

that is seriously threatened with neglect in our modern day.

There are plenty of Catholics to whom the word “sin” sounds
old-fashioned. As long as they are not found guilty of some

public crime, they consider themselves almost ready for canoni-

zation. Should it not make one reflect that the saints, even the
most practical-minded and unemotional among them, could
not do enough in bewailing their sins! They realized what

a terrible disorder the smallest sin involves. They felt a whole-

some trembling before the judgment seat of an all-holy and

all-just God. They had the strength to face themselves calmly

in the mirror, without self-conceit, and to admit unreservedly

the mirror’s answer : we all are sinners.



MAKING SIGN OF CROSS WHEN RECEIVING BLESSING 19

I would regard it as a good thing if striking our breast

would at times serve to awaken this healthy disposition of

the true Christian. The publican at the rear of the temple,

whom our Lord set up before our eyes as the abiding model of
genuine prayer, did not merely say: O God, have mercy on
me. He said—and we say it after him every time we strike
our breast: O God, have mercy on me, a sinner

!

9 ... MAKING THE SIGN OF THE CROSS WHEN RE-
CEIVING A BLESSING

It lies so deep in our Catholic blood that it happens almost

naturally. As often as a priest blesses us with his hand, or

more so with the Blessed Sacrament, our right hand spon-

taneously goes to our forehead and we sign ourselves with
the Sign of the Cross. It seems as if we wanted to catch the
blessing and apply it to ourselves, to make it penetrate and
nourish body and soul, our thought, speech and feeling.

That we do this with the Sign of the Cross is not just acci-
dental. Blessings are given with the Sign of the Cross to

remind us that in the world of the New Testament in which
we live, all blessings come from Christ’s Cross. Ancient pagans
believed that the hands of their priests were automatically

empowered to bless, hence worthy of veneration. The hands
of Christian priests are indeed deserving of reverence, not as if

they could of themselves produce a blessing, but because they

may distribute the blessings flowing from the Cross and from
Christ’s altar.



20 HOLY SIGNS

If you understand this, you will easily see that there is no

greater or more beautiful blessing than holy Mass. For in the

holy Sacrifice the Cross of Christ is again raised up mysterious-

ly in our midst so that its graces may stream down upon us.
The Mass is the one great blessing to which our poor human
life humbly bows every day—or at least on Sundays.

In this connection it always grieves me to hear people in-
sistently expressing the desire that sacramental Benediction

be given as often as possible after Mass (or even already before

Mass) and that the Blessed Sacrament remain exposed during

Mass for their special devotion. They have not yet learned

how the Mass itself is the most beautiful and most powerful
Benediction.

If then we eagerly reach out for ordinary blessings with
the Sign of the Cross, it is no more than right that we re-
peatedly invoke upon body and soul the great blessing of the

Cross in holy Mass by means of the Sign of the Cross. Who-
ever has witnessed the celebration of Mass in the Eastern rite

will have seen how the faithful almost continuously accom-
pany the Sacred Act with their big Sign of the Cross (from

right to left) and with bowing.

We of the West are not accustomed to such frequent repe-
titions, but we have been taught from childhood to make the
Sign of the Cross at least at the main parts of the holy Sacri-

fice. Thus we begin and conclude our assistance at Mass with
the Sign of the Cross (properly, slowly, and with devotion, I

trust)
;
the one we make with the priest when he begins the

preliminary prayers at the foot of the altar, the other when

he imparts the final blessing. When our Lord comes to us for
the first time with His word of blessing at the Gospel, we
make the Sign of the Cross on forehead, lips and breast: all

our thoughts, words and sentiments should be increasingly

permeated with the message of Christ and of His Cross. When



BURYING OUR FACE IN OUR HANDS 21

He then enters bodily into our midst at the Consecration and
renews the Sacrifice of the Cross among us, there is no more

appropriate response on our-^art to this holiest of acts than

a devout Sign of the Cross.

Some pious souls may overdo it by crossing themselves and
striking the breast too often, but I believe we should make the
Sign of the Cross at the elevation of the Host and of the

Chalice, looking up with adoring faith, as if to say: “My Lord
and my God, truly present on the altar, receive me, body and
soul, into the blessing of Thy death on the Cross and into
the power of Thy immolation.”
The most meaningful Sign of the Cross at holy Mass is that

which, as I observed in certain countries, is made on forehead,
lips and breast, immediately after receiving holy Communion.

Sharing in the sacrificial Banquet is indeed the best and most

efficacious way of drawing the blessing of the Cross from the

altar into our body and soul. At this moment it expresses in
the truest and fullest sense what we want to signify with the
Sign of the Cross : O Lord, fill my whole being, body and soul,
my thoughts and words and sentiments, with blessings from
Thy Cross. Draw me ever more deeply into Thy immolation
and into its guarantee of victory!

10.. . BURYING OUR FACE IN OUR HANDS

You need not know much about children to understand how
hard it is for them to concentrate. What is impressed upon
them one minute is already forgotten in the next, not that



22 HOLY SIGNS

they refuse to take admonitions seriously, but that some

stronger impression has already erased it. Hence it would be

entirely wrong to build a child’s spiritual life purely on interior

convictions, for these could not go deep enough to make a
lasting mark. We must build solid external forms of religion
into the life of the child, and these it will gradually fill with

proper content.

Experienced educators accordingly have taught children

the gesture of recollectedness, of which we here speak, after
receiving holy Communion. For they know how this gesture,
so natural to the occasion, would at that moment affect the
heart of the child more forcefully than any explanation or

admonition. It will tell them: Now you must turn inward.
Now you must direct your eyes upon the silent Divine Guest
within you. Now you must avoid all distractions so that you
may hold intimate conversation with Him in your heart. Of
course, we cannot expect miracles of piety from such a
gesture; a child is but a child.

However, we adults might sometimes be much surprised

—

and put to shame—if we could but see what real Eucharistic
devotion wells up in true childlike fashion behind the en-

closure of those small hands. A precious instance of such in-
terior devotion was given by a little seven-year-old in her reply

to the question as to how she could pray so long behind those
hands: first she told her dear Savior all the prayers she knew,

and when finished with them, she told Him the story of
Snow White!
Should we adults also, after receiving holy Communion,

retain this gesture learned in childhood? Certainly there are

those who can be recollected without it, but as a rule I think
it would also be very helpful if we too would enclose ourselves
at this important and precious moment of intimate personal
contact with our Lord.



BURYING OUR FACE IN OUR HANDS 23

In late years one could at times hear the anxious concern

expressed that such self-enclosure might give rise to the false

idea that holy Communion is purely a matter between me and
“my Savior.” It would therefore be better, after receiving holy
Communion, to kneel erect with folded hands and uncovered

face, in token of our common fellowship at the holy table.
Such reasoning would be correct, if burying one’s face in

one’s hands had to mean a selfish seclusion from one’s neigh-

bor. This no one will maintain. I even think that only he who
has learned to look upon holy Communion as an altogether
personal union with Christ will become increasingly conscious

that by “growth into the Head” we also grow more closely
together with all the members. In this age of distractions we
must be on our guard against whatever weakens Christian

recollection, because to imperil recollection would endanger

the very foundation of Eucharistic piety.



^loiy ^L)a\)ö and iSeaöonö

11... SUNDAY

You can perhaps faintly recall how your teacher once told
you in school that most of the names for the days of the week

date back to times immemorial when our ancestors were still
pagan. That is true, they really are old. The pagan Teutons
named one of the days of the week after the sun, another
after the moon, one after their god of thunder, another after

their goddess Freya. Accordingly we still have the names
Sunday, and, with some linguistic adaptation, Monday, Thurs-

day and Friday. But isn’t it really strange that after so many
Christian centuries, we still labor with these ancient pagan
names, especially when the first day of the week, that of our
Lord’s resurrection, has taken on an entirely new meaning?
How did it happen that this was not changed?
The Church came to our forefathers, not as a destroyer, but

as a kind Mother. False beliefs had to be uprooted, even if

hearts bled in the operation; that could not be helped. But

not everything had to be torn out in the process. She knew
exactly how precious little there is in a name. “If only they
no longer believe in their god Thunder,” she thought to herself,

“let them say Thursday as long as they want.” After all, it did

not matter much in the case of the weekdays, and actually no
Christian names for them existed. To this day the Church
merely numbers the weekdays in sequence, except Saturday,

and says, e.g., for Wednesday, feria quarta, the “fourth day,”

24



SUNDAY 25

in sober Roman fashion. (The ancient Romans sometimes
even called their children simply by number, as Tertius or

Quintus

,

i.e., Number 3 or Number 5, instead of bothering
about a first name.)

In the case of Sunday, however, it is harder to understand

why the old name was kept. When the day received a new
significance, why not also a new name? There existed one
really venerable name: the “Lord’s Day,” as the Apostle St.

John already called the first day of the week. And the Church
still calls it that. But the answer briefly is this: the Christians

gave not only the day, but also its pagan name a new Christian
meaning. By saying “Sunday” they no longer thought of a

planet in the sky, but of that wonderful Sun which rose on

Easter morn from the dark tomb. They thought of Christ,

“the Sun of our salvation,” as they loved to speak of Him. For

this reason “Sunday” was for them another word for “Lord’s

Day.”

Don’t you feel how the old pagan word begins to shine in
a wonderful Christian light when understood in this sense?
Sun, i.e., light and life and brightness and warmth and joy

—

all that has life exults in it. He who on Sunday morning rose
gloriously from a tomb is for us Light and Life and Brightness

and Warmth and Joy! We call the first day of the week
“Sunday” because the Sun of Salvation gives it light. This Sun

did not rise only once; again and again It rises in our midst

on the altar.

This gives the ultimate meaning to our going to church on

Sunday mornings. It is not to fulfill a hard, rigid command-
ment, no, but that from the frost and cold and chill of our

weekday world, we come out into the “Sun” where our
chilled soul at once feels as if gently stroked by a Mother’s

warm hands. A missionary once asked an old Indian what he
was doing for hours in church before the tabernacle without



26 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

a book (which would not have helped him much, as he could

not read anyway) and without moving his lips in prayer. The
old man answered simply and naively: “I hold my soul to the
Sun!” That is why we call the Lord’s Day “Sunday,” because
then we can hold our poor, sick soul “to the Sun” that it may
be healed by the rays of divine mercy.

12... WHY THE ANGELUS IS SAID STANDING ON
SUNDAYS

The custom varies, but if in your church it is the practice to
stand while reciting the Angelus on Sundays, have you won-

dered why? On weekdays it is always said kneeling, even on
feastdays such as Christmas or Epiphany. Apparently, then,

standing has nothing to do with the Angelus, but with Sunday.

In this little, insignificant custom, so easily overlooked (did

you ever stop to reflect on it?), we have a trace of ancient
Sunday piety, a piety from the days of the Church’s youth,

from the age of the martyrs.

This was then the rule: on Sundays (and during all of

Easter time) prayers are said standing; for every Sunday is a

“little Easter,” a “Resurrection Day” (so the Russians still

call Sunday). On that day one must not pray bent low and
kneeling, but rather standing upright for sheer joy that the

Lord is risen. The act surges up from the very depths of human
nature; for in the face of great joy a man feels bound to rise,
be he sitting or lying down or kneeling. Standing alone befits
intense joy. Standing best expresses man’s dignity, no animal



WHY THE ANGELUS IS SAID STANDING ON SUNDAYS 27

can imitate it. On Sundays we must pray standing, so the
early Christians said, because on Sundays we must rejoice in
Christ’s resurrection.

And secondly, they added, we must pray standing because
of our own resurrection. To the Christian, Easter does not
merely mean that Christ has risen, but that we all rose on our
own Easter day, the day on which we were baptized, to walk
in the newness of Easter life. Only the noblest of postures,

standing, properly expresses this nobility, the highest on earth;

of it we Christians are proudly mindful, particularly on
Sundays. For now as brothers and sisters of the risen Lord we
belong to the royal family of God (that is why at your Baptism
you were anointed like a king). Anyone who has risen with
Christ and has “stood up” from the death of sin should remain

standing, mindful of his Christian dignity.

Here we ought to call attention to something you already
may have noticed in your missal. In the Canon of the Mass
before the Consecration the priest prays for “those standing

about,” even when everyone in church is kneeling or sitting.
In ancient times when this venerable prayer became part of
the Canon, things were quite different. Actually the faithful

assisted at Mass standing, despite the discomfort. Why so?
This too has something to do with Easter. The early Chris-
tians had the right approach, namely, every Mass is a bit of

Easter. At each holy Mass we meet with the living, risen Lord;
hence we must stand—so they felt—out of sheer joy, proud
that we belong to Him and have risen with Him.

Is it wrong then, you may ask, to kneel during this most
sacred part of the Mass, as we were taught? No, for in the
course of time another approach, which is also correct and

important, took precedence, namely, that at so sacred an

action one must assist with deepest reverence. Therefore we
need not and should no longer stand during the entire



28 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

Canon; but what the early Christians wanted to express by

standing at holy Mass and on Sundays still holds for us as

well. It is good that with the Angelus a small reminder at

least has been preserved. Christians should feel happy and

proud in reflecting on this basic truth of faith: Christ lives

and we live in Him.

13. . .THE ASPERGES BEFORE THE SUNDAY HIGH
MASS

The Asperges is a ceremony known from childhood days.
Before the High Mass on Sundays the priest does not begin

as usual with the prayers at the foot of the altar, but vested in

an ample cope with the stole crossed over his breast, he goes

through the church and sprinkles the faithful with holy

water; meanwhile the choir sings the Asperges

,

or during the

Easter season, the Vidi aquam. And those present take the
holy water with the Sign of the Cross as the priest passes by.

Now, honestly, what would you answer if a Protestant
friend who accompanied you to High Mass would ask you
why the priest “squirted” that water on the people? Perhaps
in your embarrassment you would say: “It is always done;

it just belongs there.” But both of you would feel that this is

no explanation.

The answer, it is true, is not in the catechism; yet it is not
hard to find if one does a little thinking. It is a question of holy

water at the beginning of the greatest act of Christian wor-

ship, the main function of the whole week. Hence it must



THE ASPERGES BEFORE THE SUNDAY HIGH MASS 29

have some connection with the holy water used at the begin-

ning of our Christian life, the water of Baptism. With blessed

water the blessing begins which you now experience at the
altar, the celebration of holy Mass.

This is what the holy water before the Sunday High Mass

means to say. If it had not flowed over your forehead, you

would be excluded from the garden of paradise, now again
open to you; you would not be permitted to eat of the tree

of life, mysteriously planted anew in the midst of God’s

kingdom. Blind and with a chilly heart, you would sit and

wait until “it” is all over, without recognizing Him passing
by, the Lord of the new paradise, the new Adam, Christ.
Now God be thanked that it is altogether different. You are
baptized, you feel at home in this house and near this altar;
you have a natural right to this paradise and in this family

and at this family table of the new Adam, Christ Jesus. “Be
proud, baptized Christian, of the family treasure that is here

revealed.” That is what the sprinkling of holy water wants to

tell you. Therefore the hymn Vidi aquam refers directly to
the water of Baptism; the prophet Ezechiel had seen it stream-

ing from the right side of the temple (prefiguring the right

side of the temple of Christ’s body which the soldier opened

with a lance), and “all to whom the water came were healed.”
The sprinkling of holy water before the Sunday High Mass

exhorts the baptized Christian to be justly proud, and this

should ring in the ears of the pitiable Catholics who get up on
Sunday mornings and lament over having to go to church, as

if they had never learned to put it in the “Catholic” way: “It

is my highest privilege to assist at holy Mass today!”
Mother Church has also another purpose in giving us holy

water before the Sunday High Mass. Not only does she want
to awaken a right and noble Christian pride, but also a true,

repentant Christian humility (the two belong together and



30 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

where the one is, there the other should also be found). “You

are baptized and should be proud of it,” she says, “but look at

your baptismal robe; see what you have done to it by your

daily sins. With my prayer and blessing I want to help you
wash it clean before you approach the holy altar.” Therefore

with the words of the Asperges (part of the penitential Psalm

50), the Church teaches us to cry to the Lord: “Wash me, and
I shall be made whiter than snow.” Not that drops of water
wash the soul clean. But the mercy of the Lord can.

Here is the answer you should have given your Protestant

friend. The drops of holy water, falling on us before the
Sunday High Mass, give us a little sermon at the entrance to
the celebration of Christ’s holy Sacrifice: “Take pride in being

allowed to come, you baptized Christian; give thanks to Him
who called you. Be humble, you sinful Christian, and before
you come, petition Him who alone can wash clean the
baptismal robe of your soul, and it will become white as snow.”

How much value the Church places on this sermon can,
moreover, be gathered from this that she exhorts us on coming

to holy Mass to take holy water ourselves from the font at

the door and make the Sign of the Cross on forehead, breast
and shoulders. It is a pity that many Catholics do it so thought-
lessly and slovenly. (Perhaps you heard about the Protestant

who came to church with his Catholic friend and afterwards
asked him what everybody meant by those motions of the

hand around the stomach upon entering the building!) True,

one cannot always give full attention to an oft-repeated

ceremony; but I believe that anyone who has at least a faint
notion of the meaning of holy water at the church’s entrance,

as we have just discussed it, cannot but take it reverently, and
cross himself devoutly—even if at the moment he is not
actually conscious of how that drop of holy water points up
a Christian’s just pride and true humility.



14... ADVENT YEAR AFTER YEAR

No Catholic who attends church regularly fails to sense
a new awakening in his soul when year after year, on a Sunday

at the close of November or the beginning of December, he

again hears the stirring melodies of Advent, familiar to him

from childhood. Even those near the rear vestibule catch the

spirit and hum along. The rays of a holy, impetuously joyous
expectation inflame anew all those present, as once they

stirred up in their youthful hearts joyous thoughts of approach-

ing Christmas.

But if one reflects, is it not strange that year after year we
begin all over again, looking forward to the coming of One
who already appeared two thousand years ago? Is it not the
very substance of our faith that the Son of God has come and
has redeemed us? Why then do we begin every Church year
with this acting as if He had not yet come? We cannot well
assume (though some pious books put it that way) that the

Church is staging a sacred drama with the Old Testament as

Act One, and so it has to be acted “as if” the Savior had not

yet been born. Now the Church’s liturgy is too serious and
sacred for such playful “as if’s.” There must be something

else, something genuine about it, if she directs us to begin

every year with suppliant cries for the coming of the Lord.

Perhaps you will say : Mother Church means the coming of

Christ to us and to the world. He did come, yet He still has
not come because of our sins. There are millions who do not

31



32 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

know anything about Him, or no longer care. Even our own
hearts have not yet embraced Him as they should.
This answer is correct; it is a good reason for our annual

Advent, but it is not the whole answer. Did you ever notice

that not only on the last Sunday, but also on the first Sunday

of the Church year the Gospel about Christ’s final coming on

the clouds of heaven is read? For this final, redeeming coming

the early Christians prayed with all the longing of their hearts.

One of their most fervent cries, recorded on the last page of
the New Testament (Apoc. 22:20) was: Maranatha, which
means, “Come, Lord Jesus!” This is the original Advent

prayer. It refers, not to Christ’s first coming, but to one still

before us, His return on the clouds of heaven.

You will ask in surprise: Why should I pray every Advent
for a speedy end of the world? No, it is not meant that way.

But every Christian should give a little time every year,

removed from the turmoil of the world, to take a look beyond

death and the grave, to learn how, as the Gospel of the first

Sunday of Advent puts it, “to lift up your head” to the coming

Lord “because your redemption is at hand.”

Many have grown accustomed to regard the day of Christ’s
final coming as the dark Day of Judgment, forgetting the
while that for those who believe and are saved (and surely we
hope and pray to be among them), it is the blessed day of
lasting salvation, for our poor body too. Did it ever strike you

that in the Gospel just referred to, our divine Savior does not,

as one might expect, speak of the fig tree in autumn, which

casts off its leaves, but of springtime when it shoots forth its
tender buds? Christ’s return does not occasion a dismal world-

autumn, but after the long cold winter of time comes the

great world-springtime, eternal Easter!

Too readily we Christians, amid our many preoccupations
and wants, lose sight of that last, happy goal of all life and



THREE MASSES ON CHRISTMAS 33

history. Therefore the Church exhorts us to sing from our

hearts and to pray with the early Christians, at least each year

during Advent: “Come, O come, Emmanuel!”
Has Advent then lost all connection with Christmas? I did

not say that. Advent means preparation for Christmas and as

such was introduced into the calendar. But the Christmas

feast, still devoid of the false sentimentality by which it is

being more and more degraded, meant more to the early

Christians. For them Christmas was the great annual feast

of Christ’s nativity in the flesh over against Easter, the day of

His triumphant resurrection. But how could one prepare
better for a feast of Christ than by earnestly looking forward

to and yearning with all one’s being for His coming—which
really implies reaching out again and again toward His Com-
ing at the end of days? Year after year Christmas would then

bring the consoling and blessed realization that our Savior’s

final Coming is only a Return; that once He came to redeem
His people from their sins but “in a little while” He will
come again; then “your hearts will rejoice, and your joy no

one will take from you” (John 16:22).

15... THREE MASSES ON CHRISTMAS

If you wish to get beneath the privilege allowing every

priest to say three Masses on Christmas, you will have to go

back some fifteen hundred years, to Christian Rome of the
fifth century. While the custom of saying three Masses on

All Souls’ Day was introduced by Pope Benedict XV in 1915



34 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

for the many who died in the First World War, that on
Christmas Day is very ancient. Nor was a proclamation made
on a certain day for the whole world; the Pope first made it
his own practice in Rome and only gradually, like so many
other papal customs, it spread over all of Western Christendom.

But what moved the Pope to celebrate three Masses just

on Christmas? It happened in this way. At first there was

on Christmas, as on other feast days, only one solemn papal

Mass, the one now given in the missal as the third, “in the
daytime.” In the early days the Pope celebrated at St. Peter’s.

At the tomb of the first Pope, the Christians of Rome, to-

gether with vast numbers of pilgrims from all over the world,

would gather to celebrate with St. Peter’s successor the Birth-

day of the world’s true Ruler. If you read carefully the text

of this Third Mass of Christmas, you will sense the world-wide

spirit of that ancient Roman celebration: “A Child is born to
us, a Son is given to us! Government is upon His shoulders.”

Later, in the Rome of the Middle Ages, this Mass was offered
in the basilica of St. Mary Major (as still indicated in your
missal).

In about the fifth century pious pilgrims reported how the
Christians of Jerusalem kept the feast of Christ’s nativity. In

the Holy Land they had had the enviable opportunity of

celebrating the sacred mysteries at the very places where they

were first enacted. Each year Christmas at Bethlehem was

observed with solemn midnight services in the grand basilica

Constantine had erected over the Grotto of the Nativity,

around the actual manger in which the Savior had lain. Could

this be somehow imitated in Rome? Was there not a replica
of the crib of Bethlehem venerated at St. Mary Major? Thus

it came about one Christmas that the Pope with his small

retinue marched during the Holy Night to the basilica of St.

Mary Major and there “at the crib” offered holy Mass.



THREE MASSES ON CHRISTMAS 35

Hence even today you find in your missal a double heading

over the First Mass of Christmas: “At Midnight. Station at

St. Mary Major, at the Altar of the Crib.” In reading the text

of this Mass you can still feel the great silence and fervor of

the occasion (quite different from the world-embracing tone

of the Third Mass) : “The Lord hath said to me : Thou art
My Son; this day have I begotten Thee.”
Some years passed, and the Pope began to celebrate a third

Mass between these two. It happened this way. On his return
from St. Mary Major to St. Peter’s, he passed through the

Greek quarters on the Palatine, where, by coincidence, there

was kept on December 25 the feast of a famous Eastern martyr,

St. Anastasia; in her honor a small church had been built at

the foot of the Palatine, As a polite gesture, especially toward

the Byzantine officials living in that quarter and toward the

emperor in distant Constantinople, the Pope decided to honor

St. Anastasia’s “Nameday” by offering a third Mass in their

little church. Therefore you still find over the text of the

Second Mass of Christmas: “At St. Anastasia’s.” Thus it hap-

pened that we commemorate a martyr on Christmas (a unique
instance)

.

The other title for this Second Mass is: “At Dawn”; that
was about the time when the papal procession arrived there. It
afforded a reason for choosing the Gospel of the shepherds

—

in the early morning they too hastened to the crib. Hence, too,

all the atmosphere of dawn, centering on the theme: our true

morning Sun is risen, Christ the Lord! “This day a Light shall

shine upon us; for to us the Lord is born.”

The custom, then, that every priest may offer three Masses
on Christmas Day goes back to an ancient practice of the
Holy Father in Rome. The priest need not travel back and
forth (unless he has missions to provide for), but for him the
three Masses are expressive of an overflowing Christmas joy. I



36 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

am sure we all share in his holy joy as our ears catch the
venerable words of the three Christmas Masses, resounding

like a threefold melody about the new-born Savior—from the
soft, sweet tones of the Midnight Mass to the brightly joyous

notes of the “Shepherds’ Mass” to the full, sonorous strains of

the Mass “at Daytime.” “A Child is born to us, a Son is given
to us! Government is upon His shoulders.”

16 ... THE GREEN COLOR OF THE MASS VESTMENTS

I wonder whether you have ever stopped to notice what kind

of vestment the priest wears at the altar, a violet or a white or

a red or a green one; or whether you belong to those who
have come to believe that it is all accidental—the priest merely
wears the first one handy in the sacristy. One thing you
have surely noticed: at a funeral Mass the priest wears black.

In social and civil life too, black is the color of sorrow. Another

point you probably are aware of is that on the ordinary Sun-

days during summer and autumn, green is used (unless a
higher feast falls on a Sunday, e.g., when the feast of St. Law-

rence on August io falls on a Sunday; then red is used, the

color for martyrs).

Now if you pay close attention, you will observe that green
appears at another season of the Church year, namely, on the

Sundays after Epiphany. The first of these Sundays is indeed
an exception, because on it the feast of the Holy Family is an-

nually celebrated, and the color is white. But from then on to



THE GREEN COLOR OF THE MASS VESTMENTS 37

Septuagesima green holds its own. Of course, there are not as

many Sundays as after Pentecost, and if Easter is early there

are quite few, sometimes only one.

That green is used only during these two seasons of the

Church year has its meaning. Both times mark the closing of

a festive season, of Christmas or of Easter. During the festive

seasons you see white, the color expressing joy (Pentecost is

an exception, when red is used as reminder of the fiery

tongues). Now also bear in mind that each of the festive
seasons is preceded by a period of preparation, distinguished by

the use of violet. So you see how the change of color at the
altar reflects the wonderful ebb and flow of the Church year.

We might put it this way so that even a child would under-
stand : twice a year we climb up a mountain, first that of Christ-

mas, then the higher peak of Easter. Each time when it goes
up hill, in Advent and from Septuagesima all during Lent,

you see violet at the altar on Sundays. When the peak has been
reached, all shines forth in white until the down-hill course

begins, be that for the short stretch after Epiphany or for the

long one (at least twenty-four Sundays) after Pentecost; then

green is used.

Thus anyone who has learned to be a little observant will
sense the spirit of the season when on Sunday morning he sees

the priest coming out of the sacristy. He will know whether
the praying Church (and we all belong to that, not just the

priest) is resolved in holy earnest to climb one of the two sum-

mits of the Church year, or is joyfully surveying the top of a

festive season, or has begun her downward journey, quietly
meditating on the mysteries of the respective period.

So when, for example, you open your missal on a “green Sun-

day” after Epiphany and begin to read the opening words of

the Mass text, “Let all the earth adore Thee, O God, and sing
to Thee; let it sing a psalm to Thy Name, O Thou Most High,”



38 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

you no longer need an explanation of the song; you know that
the praying Church is descending from the mountain of Christ-

mas. Clearly before you is an unforgettable picture : the picture

of the men from the East, in whom the whole earth for the
first time fell to its knees before God-become-Man. And the
Church now calls out to all her children from the ends of the
earth to worship and fall down with them: “Let all the earth
adore Thee, O God, and sing to Thee.”

1 7 ... LENT EVEN IN OUR DAY

Would it not be wise if the Church quietly did away with
Lent as old-fashioned ? It was good and proper at a time when

men used to"carouse and live like gluttons the rest of the year
(and when they still had stronger nerves than we!). Forty

days of fasting each year were good for them. But such a cus-

tom no longer fits into the world of our day! Why an extra
Lent when for many people all the days from January i to
December 31 are days of fasting? Instead of going to the

trouble of dispensing right and left, it would be much simpler
to discard the whole “apparatus,” and we would have a year
with spring and Easter without having to listen to the usual

“Lenten announcements!”

Why did the Church never heed such reasoning? Is it be-
cause she is old-fashioned and will never discard ancient cus-

toms? No, that is not it. Actual ballast the Church has always

shaken off in the course of history (although she may not have
been in a hurry to do so). But the annual Lenten observance

she cannot and will not give up. Why?



LENT EVEN IN OUR DAY 39

First of all, because the law of fasting is something from

which she can never wholly dispense anyone. Something has

to be demanded from all her children, even from those whom
she dispenses from bodily fast. It is because—let us say it
straight out—she believes in the devil. Secondly, she likewise

believes in his most dangerous partner, the “old man within
us.” On principle this “man of wickedness” will never react
either to “good will” or to pious exhortation. He can be roused
.only in one way, by force. Unfortunately we do this of our
own accord only very faintheartedly or not at all; that is why
the Church each year provides forty days of Lent. A Christian,
if he wants to be and remain one, must do violence to himself,

to his lusts and desires. That can’t be helped. Not without pur-

pose, then, are these forty days preceding Easter; for if you

wish to live and rejoice with Christ, you must in all earnestness

have died with Him first.
Can anyone look at the suffering Savior without a burning

feeling in his soul that he still has it much easier than his
Lord and Master? To die with Christ, that we try to do by
means of physical fasting, and by other types of Lenten morti-

fication. If it hurts, it is a sign that it is good for us; and if

our action benefits another, it is doubly good.

Moreover, Holy Church will never yield and abrogate Lent

because the season of penance is more to her than just a time

of fasting. Fasting and self-denial represent but one, and not

even the most important, aspect. As envisioned by the Church,
the picture is this: the forty days preceding her greatest feast

should be days on which each one really enters into himself,

days of recollection, the forty-day annual retreat of the Chris-

tian people, as it has been beautifully named. A season given
to prayer more than any other. A season when one devotes
time to spiritual reading. A season for gathering together some-
what our distracted, fluttering heart so that, calm and rec-



40 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

ollected, it may enter upon the solemn annual celebration
of the work of our redemption.

Mother Church would prove herself a poor mother if she

would surrender a thing so precious, especially when she

must witness how so many of her children, amid an environ-
ment growing daily more pagan, lose more and more in self-

control and interior spirituality. She well knows how her
enemies revile her as a gloomy pessimist because of her edu-

cational principles. Little does she worry over that. She is

convinced that true life and true joy, the risen life of her Lord

and the Easter joy flowing from it, can be found only through

self-conquest and interior recollection.

Accordingly the season of Lent, which Mother Church an-

nually celebrates with us and to which she refers in her simple

language as Sancta Quadragesima, the “Holy Forty Days,”

does not suppress joy, but rather serves to increase it. Her

seriousness is no gray, dismal austerity. From the very outset
there shines the cheersome light of the festive Easter cele-

bration, for which Lent prepares us. Her sadness is not a
harsh and hopeless sadness; it is the bitterness of Christ’s

chalice, of which it is written: “If we suffer with Christ, we
shall also rise with Him.”

18... THE BLESSED PALM BRANCH ATTACHED TO
THE CRUCIFIX

Here is an old, venerable custom which, I believe, is being

gradually neglected, along with so many others. When on



BLESSED PALM ATTACHED TO THE CRUCIFIX 41

Palm Sunday the blessed palm branches are brought home,

father or mother picks out the choicest ones and places them

behind each crucifix in the house; and there they remain till

next Palm Sunday, no matter how withered and pale they
may look. Even if you have been accustomed to this decora-

tion of the crucifix from childhood days, you might feel

embarrassed if a non-Catholic visitor would ask you why it is
done. Grandfather or grandmother might still have the answer

ready: the blessed palm branch is there to call down God’s
blessing upon us; therefore we also put it in the barns and
fields, and behind every crucifix in the house.

An excellent answer. But if some “progressive” considers
you gullible or superstitious for thinking that a palm branch

can call down God’s blessing—there are even self-styled
modern and enlightened Catholics who purport to have out-
grown such ideas!—let him consult a Holy Week missal and
see the exact text : “Graciously let Thy grace and blessing rest
wherever these branches are brought.” Not that the palm

branch can of itself produce the blessing (this grandpa and

grandma also knew), but the prayer of Holy Church which

is, one might say, attached to it calls down God’s blessing upon
house and barn and field.

But if we carefully read further in the liturgy of Palm
Sunday, we find another answer which, I believe, is even
better. You have surely heard it said that the palm since
ancient times is a symbol of victory; one often sees the martyrs

represented with palms in their hands. One of the Palm
Sunday antiphons gives a similar picture: “Crowds go out

with flowers and palms to meet the Redeemer; worthy homage
they pay to the Conqueror who comes home in triumph!” See
how wonderfully the palm branch fits behind the image of
the crucified and dying Savior. It is a sign of His victory; it

tells us that this image only apparently is an image of death,



42 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

that in reality it is the image of life, of Him who overcame
death by death. That little palm branch is a large, shining

symbol of Easter above the sad scene of Good Friday.
If understood in this way the palm branch behind the cruci-

fix gives the right answer to those who remark with a pitying
shake of the head: What a sad and frustrating religion this
must be which teaches its people to hang the image of a dead

body on their walls! For believing Catholics the image of the

crucified Christ is not an image of death, but of life. Of course,

it reminds us that we all must die one day (a good and
wholesome thought), but amid the sorrow of death on earth

it proclaims the comforting message of Easter, of victory and

bodily resurrection.

19. . .THE EASTER VIGIL

That the centre of gravity of the Christmas celebration falls

during the night, at the Midnight Mass or very early in the

morning, has always seemed quite natural, for Christ was

born on the first Christmas night. But that another and

greater feast, Easter, has had since 1951 its midnight celebra-

tion, occasions surprise here and there. You may even have
heard the somewhat impatient whisper: It was good enough

for so many hundreds of years, why couldn’t they have re-
mained satisfied with it now?
A statement like this betrays more ignorance than knowl-

edge. The two major events of Christian faith, the nativity
and the resurrection of the Son of God, took place, according

to the Bible, in the silence of the night, or at least in the dark



THE EASTER VIGIL 43

hours of early morning. From earliest times both “blessed
nights” in which the light of redemption shone forth were

sanctified with divine services. In fact, the celebration of the

Easter night belongs to the oldest strata of Christian worship;

it already had a three-hundred year history when the Christ-

mas feast was introduced.

That the Easter-night festivity was in time moved to the

preceding evening, and later even to Holy Saturday morning,

proved most unfortunate. As a first result of this transfer, the

church remained practically empty during the most beautiful

and most important divine service of the whole year. Secondly,

those who attended experienced the painful realization that
the Easter joy of Holy Saturday morning was premature; for

during the whole first Holy Saturday the Lord’s body was

still resting in the tomb. Thirdly, the liturgy’s chief symbolic

action, the light struck from stone, which from early days was

carried into the church with a triple Lumen Christi signifying
the risen Savior, lost much of its meaning when performed in
the brightness of dawn (and the wrong one too!) instead of
during the dark of night.

All these incongruities, doubly distressing because for cen-

turies they prevented the climax to the liturgical year from

receiving due recognition, were removed by the bold decision

of Pope Pius XII in 1951. Now the churches are again crowded;
everybody feels that the proper hour for Easter joy has struck,

the night, namely, when Christ our Lord broke through the
darkness of the tomb and rose triumphantly as the First-born

of those who sleep. (This holds good also when the celebration
is held late Saturday evening; and it would be yet more in
place if some future decree would allow its observance early

Easter morning when it is still dark) . At any rate, now every-
body is satisfied that in such a nightly celebration the sym-

bolism of the Easter light can be fully appreciated.



44 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

It was a happy move indeed to restore the “Easter light”
celebration according to its ancient form. Essentially, the rite

is again as it was fifteen hundred years ago at the most ven-

erable place of Christian Easter festivities, the Holy Sepulchre

Basilica in Jerusalem, and in many places in the West. As then
at Jerusalem, every one who now participates in the celebra-
tion receives a light from the blessed Easter candle and holds

it in his hands.

Each year the Easter light in our own hand can speak its
profound message to our heart. It is the blessed message that

in our poor, trembling hands and hearts we are to carry the
Easter light of Christ into the midst of the world’s darkness.

The Sun that rose from Jerusalem’s tomb on that first Easter
night did not again sink from sight on some distant horizon.

It remains here to light up and warm and set aglow our inner-
most being so that we can exclaim with the Apostle: “I live
now not I, but Christ lives in me.” For this reason Baptism
is conferred upon adults during Easter night; for this reason

baptismal water is blessed; and for this reason with burning

candles in our hand we annually renew our baptismal
promises, our determined NO to the darkness of Satan and
our grateful YES to Christ the Light.
That amid the darkness of the world into which we were

born we might better perceive the Easter message of Christ’s
all-conquering Light, the Easter celebration has again been

placed where it belongs, and where once it had been for

more than a thousand years. Indeed, of the many acts for
which Pope Pius XII will be remembered in centuries to

come, an outstanding one will certainly be this : he restored to

the Christian world the “blessed night” on which we annually

celebrate the work of our redemption.



20 . . . THE ALLELUIA AT EASTER

It is almost incredible what little thought is given to the

Easter Alleluia. When we have reached the highest joy of the
Christian year, the joy that Christ lives and we in Him, then

to voice our jubilation we employ an expression that should

always mean Easter to us, the Hebrew word Alleluia. It really

does not sound like a word at all, rather like the awkward

stammer of a child. Except for scholars, no one bothers about

its meaning.

Certainly, the word Alleluia can be translated and ex-

plained. It is a cry of joy and praise from the psalms and

originally meant: “Praise Yahweh!” It is one of the few

words (Amen is another) which the early Church took
over untranslated from Jewish worship, a token of the soil

from which she sprang. But that does not explain why she
picked just this Hebrew word to voice her Easter joy, an
expression that to her children sounds so mysteriously vague.

I believe she did this to impress upon them that over against

the abyss of the mystery of our redemption commemorated at

Easter, all human language fails; that in face of God’s im-
measurable mercy then experienced, we have but the amazed
stammering of a child. To me our Alleluia always sounds,
especially when sung with many notes on the final a, like the
yodeling that wells forth from the simple, pious heart of an

Alpine shepherd when at early dawn, after the darkness of a
deep Alpine night, he witnesses the indescribable grandeur of

45



46 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

the morning sun as it kisses the snow-capped mountains with

its first soft rays. The feelings this gorgeous sight arouses in
the unspoiled heart of the shepherd cannot be expressed in

words learned at school, he must give vent to them in familiar

yodel. So also the heart of the true Christian, which is ever

childlike, does not find ready words to convey its sentiments

on beholding our truly wonderful “Morning Sun” that on

Easter morn rises triumphantly from the night of the tomb
to shed light and warmth and joy upon us and all the dark-
some world. Its summary of the whole mystery is a joyous
Alleluia .

All the joy and gratitude of an over-flooded Christian heart

gushes forth in the Easter Alleluia. That is why this shout of
joy is so dear to us, as it ever was to those before us. How the
early Christians loved to sing it! St. Jerome writes: “Listen

where you will; even the farmer behind the plow sings

Alleluia
.” And in his famous letter to the noble Roman lady

Laeta on the education of her young daughter Paula, he says

:

“When she sees her grandfather she wants to run into his arms
and embrace him; and even if he does not care to listen, she

sings for him the Alleluia
.”

During the Middle Ages cathedral and monastic choirs sang

a series of farewell Alleluias on the eve of Septuagesima

Sunday (from then on to the present day the Alleluia is

omitted all through Lent). Even impressive burial scenes

were enacted as these simple pious souls bade a sorrowful

farewell to their beloved Alleluia. “It is so dear to us, we
carry it as a treasure in our hearts,” wrote Durandus with

reference to the practice on Saturday before Septuagesima.

“As a friend bidding farewell before a long journey, we em-
brace it again and again and kiss it on the lips and on the

face—wherever we can reach it.” And still today the rubrics
prescribe that the return of our “dear friend” be announced



PENTECOST EMBER WEEK 47

solemnly and with a clear voice by the sub-deacon to the bishop

or the abbot at the Easter night service: “Most Reverend

Father, I announce to you a great joy: the Alleluia!”

This then is the meaning of the Easter Alleluia : by it a bit

of the “great joy” of the redeemed is echoed against the gray

sky of our daily toil; by it is aroused a bit of the nostalgia felt

wherever true Christian joy is found; by it we nourish a long-
ing for the City of which it is written,

u
Alleluia shall be sung

in its streets” (Tob. 13:22).

21 . . . PENTECOST EMBER WEEK

In following your daily missal you must have noticed the

four weeks of the year during which occur the Ember Days,

viz., the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays that are days

of fast and abstinence. We might call them “recollection
weeks,” because they invite us at each quarter of the year to

serious reflection, to thanking God for the blessings of the
harvest (although this does not hold for the spring Ember
Days which were introduced last), and to unite in common
prayer for those presently being readied for Sacred Orders.

(In early times it was necessary to prepare for ordination by

a week of fasting.) Ember Days occur annually during the
weeks following Ash Wednesday, Pentecost, the feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross on September 14, and the feast of St.

Lucy on December 13.
There is nothing striking about Ember Days in the spring,



48 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

fall, and winter seasons; but to have them immediately after

Pentecost may seem somewhat strange. Days of fast and absti-
nence during the octave of so high and joyous 3 feast appear

inappropriate.

However, it all becomes clear when we understand what
Pentecost really is. Actually, Pentecost does not look forward,

but backward; it marks the close of the fifty-day Easter

celebration. We may have lost this approach: Easter, the great
feast of our redemption, should last, not one or three or eight

days, but fifty days in order to afford ample time to vent our

Easter joy. The “blessed fifty days” was the phrase used to
denote this most beautiful season of the year by the early

Christians. The rejoicing reached its climax on the fiftieth
day in grateful memory of the Lord’s true Easter Gift, the
precious Fruit of the redemption, namely the Holy Spirit, who
on that day came down upon the apostles and disciples. Surely
the catechism is correct in calling Pentecost a feast of the

Holy Spirit; but it should add: Who was given to the Church
as an Easter Gift. The very name Pentecost refers back to
Easter; for just as the liturgy calls the eighth day after a feast

“octave,” (the Latin for eighth) , so the fiftieth day after Easter

is known as Pentecost, after the Greek for fiftieth.
As long as Pentecost was understood in this sense as the

close and fullness of Easter, it was not thought fitting to give

it its own octave; and no one would have dreamed of viewing
this climax to Easter as the introduction to a new and inde-
pendent festive cycle. They rather argued: Now after the
fifty days of rejoicing during which there was no thought of

penance and fasting, after the Easter celebration which

sounded its joyous finale gratefully on Pentecost, the faithful

may again quietly feel that, despite Easter joy, Good Friday is
still with us. Thus it came about that the summer Ember

Week was allowed to follow immediately after Pentecost.



22 . . . THE FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART ALWAYS
ON A FRIDAY

Not all Catholics are aware that in recent decades the Feast

of the Sacred Heart was raised to a higher rank among the

feasts of the Church. Since it is not one of the holy days of

obligation, many pass it by—those who seem to think weekday
Masses and feasts are only for old and pious women. I am
convinced that not a few readers of this chapter, were I sud-

denly to ask on what day the Feast of the Sacred Heart

occurs each year, would feel much embarrassed. So I will
first tell you, it always falls on the third Friday after Pentecost.

Why was this particular Friday chosen? Because the whole
meaning of the Sacred Heart feast is very intimately con-

nected with Good Friday. To adore the Heart of Jesus is not
a sentimental devotion (although, unfortunately, some pious

books and many pious pictures may give that impression).
It means to worship the Love that redeemed us. This was

done, of course, ever since there were Christians in the world,

and all the feasts of our Lord that we celebrate throughout
the year commemorate basically nothing more than His Love.

But only in the piety of the last centuries has this Love been

pictured in the striking symbol of the human heart. Now the
great revelation of divine Love is the crucifix, Christ with

outstretched arms; and its most beautiful expression is the

wounded Heart of our crucified Redeemer pierced by the
soldier’s lance. On Good Friday, indeed, the Church’s every

49



50 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

thought and prayer center on the crucifixion, but her soul

is filled with sadness over the abysmal wickedness of those

who nailed, and still nail, her Bridegroom to the Cross.
Thus it became natural to devote a special feast after Easter

to Christ’s redeeming Love on the Cross, a kind of “trans-

ferred Good Friday.” It should be a Friday

,

and this could

not happen till the first free Friday after the Easter season,

hence on the day following the former octave of Corpus

Christi. Here we also have the reason why this joyous feast of
the Lord has a Good Friday Gospel: “One of the soldiers
with a spear opened His side, and immediately there came

out blood and water.” For the same reason this Gospel is

read on every First Friday, the day each month dedicated to

the blessed memory of the Heart of Jesus.
As with the Sacred Heart feast, so too with Corpus Christi.

Corpus Christi is celebrated on the first free Thursday after

the Easter season, since it is meant to be a “transferred Holy

Thursday.” Gratitude and joy over the Holy Eucharist could

hardly unfold in the quiet, solemn reserve of Holy Thursday;

hence a bright Eucharistic feastday after Easter was sought,

a day on which to give full festal expression to so glorious a

mystery. Perhaps it was not accidental that a woman’s loving

heart pressed for the introduction of both these feasts : Corpus

Christi by Blessed Juliana of Liege, Sacred Heart by Saint

Margaret Mary Alacoque.

Year after year after we have celebrated our redemption for
fifty days with grateful Alleluias

,

we should be able to appre-
ciate better how on these two final feastdays our redemption
continues in the sacred mystery on the altar, and how it has
its deepest source in the loving Heart of Jesus.



23 . . . THE FEAST OF MARY'S ASSUMPTION DURING
HARVEST TIME

One beautiful custom is to call a feast of the Blessed Virgin

“Mary’s Day.” It has the ring of pious simplicity and is pe-

culiarly well suited for her assumption, a mystery we now
embrace with the holy certainty of faith: Mary has preceded

us body and soul into the glory of her Son, the first of the re-

deemed. In an old Farmers’ Calendar of Tyrol there was

added another name, just as beautiful and childlike, on

August 15: “Our Blessed Lady of the Ears.” Sheaves of grain

with golden ears took an honorable place on summer’s high

feast of our Lady.

Could it be mere chance, this connection of Mary’s assump-

tion with harvest time? (Over a thousand years ago in Con-

stantinople they used to hang the first ripe grapes on Mary’s

picture on the feast of her assumption; and in the West it is

still the custom in vine-growing countries.) The Bible likes
to speak of Judgment Day as harvest day for the world: “Put
forth thy sickle and reap,” so says the voice of the angel of

judgment in the Apocalypse (14:15), “for the hour to reap has

come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.”

That last of days will indeed be God’s harvest day; the

graves will open, and the Lord will gather into His everlasting

barns all who have not wantonly cut themselves off from Him.
Was it not a beginning to this harvest day when Mary, as the
first of the redeemed, was taken up body and soul into heaven ?

51



52 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

Is she not the first precious sheaf from God’s fields, the first

delicious grape her Son and Bridegroom had planted? Every

year when it is harvest time in our fields we want to cele-
brate with joy the beginning of the great day of the world’s

harvest: Mary’s assumption into heaven.

Evidently this deep connection was far more vivid to the

minds of our ancestors than it is to us. They had the custom

of putting a wisp of herbs, blessed in Mary’s honor before

the High Mass on August 15, into the first sheaf taken from

the field. This meant as much as: O Mary, pray for our harvest!
And silently there echoed in the depth of each heart : O Mary,
you yourself are such a first blessed sheaf brought home into
God’s heavenly granary!

When they placed a bit of the wisp of herbs blessed on
Assumption Day in the coffin beneath the head of a deceased,
it was meant as a prayer for Mary’s intercession : May the same
finally happen to this dead body that happened to Mary’s

body; through her intercession may it also be gathered on
God’s great harvest day—a sheaf for the eternal barns!
To God’s great harvest day our eyes should turn and our

hearts be lifted up every year on the feast of “Our Lady of

the Ears” in memory of her who with body and soul entered
as the first sheaf. This is the reason why we annually celebrate
the assumption of Mary into heaven during harvest time.

24... THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING IN LATE
AUTUMN

The Feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of
October is the youngest of the greater feasts of the liturgical



FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING 53

year. Only several decades old, it is a tiny infant alongside the

nearly two-thousand-year-old Easter Day or alongside the
sixteen-centuries-old Feast of Christmas. Despite that, I know
how you have already grown attached to this most recent feast.
There is something austerely joyous and hearty about it.

You may be wondering, then, why they did not find a better
place for it in the calendar. Why put this joyful feast on the
last Sunday in October, when in the northern hemisphere it

is turning cold and dreary, and when the sleet and snows of

early winter come, when only All Souls’ Day fits in properly ?
Ordinarily the Church seems tö show better taste with her

feasts, so that they harmonize with the tenor of the season.

Could one imagine Christmas in mid-summer, or Easter in

fall, or Pentecost in winter, when we are used to associating
Christmas with snow and Easter with budding nature and

Pentecost with the bright summer sun? And yet the Feast
of Christ the King, the joyous feast of our undying King, was

designedly placed in the season of nature’s dying.

Are you unable to figure out the reason ? Must it always be

that nature outside furnishes a bright, festive setting ? Could it

not for once serve as a dark background so as to set off more

brilliantly a glorious feastday? Think of that other bright

feastday, which for a thousand years has come in late fall

right near the Feast of Christ the King, the Feast of All

Saints! How it grips us year after year, when it seemingly
draws back the curtain separating us from the world beyond,

and high above all earthly withering and decay unfurls the

shining vision of eternal, unfading, abiding peace to which

each year brings us a step nearer.

Now you can see why the Feast of Christ the King was
purposely placed here in the late fall in the immediate neigh-

borhood of All Saints. Here too dying nature presents the

sombre background for a bright feast. The Church wants to



54 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

console our poor, trembling, human soul during these gray
days of fog and mist when it realizes more fully than at other
seasons how along with nature it is subject to the common
lot of death and decay. She wants to console it with the im-

mortality that is promised “in a little while.” She wants to

teach it, amid the perishing things of nature, to extend its

hands to that other bright, imperishable kingdom about to

come.

Therefore, on the Feast of Christ the King Mother Church

shows us first the royal countenance John was allowed to

behold, the countenance “like the sun shining in its power”

(Apoc. 1:16), the countenance without which the nations

here below cannot be happy, and from which the coming

kingdom receives its splendor—the countenance of the eternal
King, of the God-Man Jesus Christ. And then on All Saints
she shows us the innumerable human countenances illumined
by this royal countenance which have “no need of the sun or

the moon to shine” upon them, for “the Lamb is their lamp”
(Apoc. 21:23). And finally on All Souls’ Day she shows us
the faces of those who still suffer in darkness, waiting till at
last “the eternal light shines upon them,” issuing from the

countenance of the Eternal King.

Over a hundred years ago the eighty-year-old scholar

Chateaubriand lay dying in Paris; nothing grieved the aged

patriot more than that in his old age—during the Revolution
of 1848—he had to see his king again take to flight. As the
priest entered his death chamber with the Blessed Sacrament,

the dying man lifted himself from his pillow, shook his grey
head dejectedly and faintly mumbled to himself: “The kings
are being wiped out.” Calmly but firmly came the words from

the mouth of the priest : “I bring you the King who does not
perish.”



A SAINT'S FEAST 55

Each year when it makes our spirits droop to see summer

with all its earthly beauty pitilessly blown away by the storms

of time, and kings with their pomp and splendor, then Mother
Church takes us by the hand and says: “Come, and I will show

you the King who does not perish!”

25 ... A SAINT'S FEAST

There would be many days on which to celebrate the feast

of a saint: the day of his birth, or better the day on which he

became a child of God’s family in holy Baptism; if the saint

was a bishop or a priest, the day on which he was consecrated

or ordained. Yet in most cases the Church holds to the day of

death for celebrating the memory of her saints. What may be
the reason?

When we open the book of the Church’s heroes and saints
called the Martyrology, we find an ancient term, come down
to us from the days of the early martyrs, to mark the day of

a saint’s death: dies natalis. This literally means “birthday.”

The Church takes in full earnest something that we also
should take in full earnest, yet often do not. She takes death

in the Christian spirit. She is thoroughly convinced that death

is only apparently the end, but in reality the beginning of the

true, eternal life. What precedes is really nothing but the
“birth pangs” of real living, as our Lord explains to us in one

of the most beautiful Gqspels of the whole year: “You shall

be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned to joy.'A woman
about to give birth has sorrow, because her hour has come.



56 HOLY DAYS AND SEASONS

But when she has brought forth the child, she no longer
remembers the anguish for her joy that a man is born into the
world” (John i6:2of.).

When the Church celebrates the feast of one of her chil-
dren, then her festive joy arises from the fact that this person

has passed through the “birth pangs” into the true life and

now dwells there and intercedes for us. Therefore she com-
memorates that day, which for our dull eyes is a “day of

death,” but for her unbeclouded eyes of faith a dies natalis,

a birthday into heaven.

Still another reason makes the day of a saint’s death

memorable. To be holy is really nothing else than to be like
Him of whom we sing in the Gloria: “Thou alone art holy!”
A man becomes more holy the more he resembles Christ,
maturing, as St. Paul tells us, to the mature measure of the

fullness of Christ. But never is this similarity greater in a

saint than at the moment when he realizes that the ninth
hour of his Good Friday has struck and he willingly and
gladly stretches forth his hands with his Lord and says: It is

consummated! Only at this moment does he enter into full
likeness with his Master, into His death, but also into His

passing through death to life.

The Church, therefore, loves to celebrate the memory of
her saintly sons and daughters on the day of their death. On
that day they became most like Christ; on it they died with

Him to the world and began their eternal life. Thus the day
of their death was their dies natalis

,

their birthday unto true

and eternal living with God.



^Jke iSacrijice 0}
c
~YYlaöö

26 ... THE "WE" IN THE PRAYERS OF THE MISSAL

It is a peculiar thing with the missal. There are people,

even very simple folk, who “had not learned anything” (as
they modestly confess), but once they become caught by the

missal, can’t let go of it. Year after* year they feel more at

home with it. In this ancient and venerable house, they
notice how their praying slowly catches something of the
solemn breathing of the Church at prayer, how it grows more
calm and relaxed and joyous. And their deathbed words may
reflect the spirit of the little girl in a village along the Rhine,

who in her last moments kept repeating: “We praise Thee.
We bless Thee. We adore Thee. We glorify Thee. We give
Thee thanks for Thy great glory.”
But there also are people who with the best of will cannot

get anywhere with their missal. Let them be consoled: there

are many ways of assisting at Mass, with or without a book,
which are proper and devout. Our Holy Father said this only
recently in his encyclical on the liturgy.

However, even if you should belong to this second class,

the missal is nevertheless no longer a sealed book for you.

Time and again at Mass you hear others recite prayers from
it in common, and it must have occurred to you that they
often say as many as ten times: “We offer” or “We offer up,”
and not a single time “I offer” or “I offer up.” How does this
agree with the catechism? Did it not state distinctly that the
priest alone can say Mass? Would it not then be more reason-

57



58 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

able for him to omit the “We” at the altar and say each time:
“I, the priest, offer up this sacrifice”?

Certainly it is and remains true as the catechism had it,

that only a duly ordained priest may in Christ’s Name pro-
nounce the words of consecration over the bread and the wine

at holy Mass—anyone who would teach differently would no
longer be a Catholic. But if someone would add to the

sentence, “Only the priest can consecrate,” the other words,

“Only the priest can offer,” then this second sentence would

be just as incorrect as the first is true. For we all who are
gathered around the altar as “God’s holy nation” offer with

the priest to our heavenly Father the divine Lamb upon the
altar. This is the doctrine of the Church.

Unfortunately this second sentence was not as clear in the

catechism as the first, and I suspect there are many Christians
who at holy Mass consider themselves mere pious spectators
or listeners at a sacred drama and do not reflect that at the

Mass they are much more than spectators and listeners: they
are actors and co-offerers. In his encyclical our Holy Father

made the point very clear and explicit. “Pray, brethren, that
my sacrifice and yours may become acceptable to God the
Father Almighty,” the priest says when he turns to the people
after the Secret prayer.

When you take your place in the pew at High Mass next
Sunday (I presume in your favor that you are not one of

those who scrupulously avoid High Mass), think this over:
what is being done at the altar is your sacrifice. If a pious

pagan had had on his heart what may weigh down yours on
a Sunday—say, for instance, you had a sick child at home or
a son buried on the battlefield of a foreign country—he would
have said : “I have no rest. I must offer a sacrifice to the gods

that they may hear me in my misery. I will take a sacrifice
gift, the best and most costly is hardly good enough, and



LIGHTED CANDLES ON THE ALTAR 59

offer it to the gods.” Now you have the most precious and
noblest Gift that can be found between earth and heaven;

as your oblation It rests on the altar and is being offered to

the true God, our heavenly Father, namely, His only and most

beloved Son, sacrificed on the Cross.

Perhaps you were not aware of this. Perhaps if you asked

your neighbor what he did in church and he gave you an

honest answer, he might have to say: “I just wait till it’s

over.” Is this not sad enough to bring tears ?

27... LIGHTED CANDLES ON THE ALTAR DURING
MASS

This is also a point to which little thought is given, although

it is quite interesting. Whether you come to the early Mass at

seven o’clock or to the High Mass at ten, before it begins the

server regularly comes out of the sacristy to light the candles

on the altar. And both times the church is already well lighted,
at the earlier hour with electric lights, at the later service by

the natural light of the sun now sending bright rays through
the choir window and flooding the whole altar with its blaze.
Why then lighted candles? Is it only because the Church, so
loyal to tradition, cannot wean herself of this old-fashioned

way of lighting up the altar? This might hold good for the
early Mass, but for the ten o’clock High Mass there would
surely be light enough without candles.

I believe there is a deeper reason for the strict ecclesiastical

ruling about candlelight at holy Mass. The burning candles on



60 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

the altar of sacrifice are not there to solve a technical problem

of lighting. They are symbolic. And the symbol refers to us
who surround the bright, festive altar of sacrifice, co-offering
and singing and praying.

From early days Christians loved to see themselves repre-
sented by pure, nobly erect and brightly burning candles.

You are not surprised at the pious mother, kneeling before
a statue of the Sorrowful Mother praying for her missing son

—how she would like to stay there all day, but she piust
hurry home to cook and mend—that she lights a candle in
front of the statue as if to say to the candle: Now you stay
here in my place and pray all day!

Similarly we, the co-offerers, are represented by the lighted

candles on the altar of sacrifice. It is as if we carried the burn-
ing candles and ourselves with them to the altar at the offer-

tory (as the newly-ordained still do in the Ordination Mass)

;

and there they stand as symbols of all those who, together with

the priest, offer the divine Lamb upon the altar to the heavenly
Father. I feel that we co-offerers at holy Mass could not express
our intentions more simply and more profoundly than by this

token of the burning candle. The “old man” within us (how
well we know him!) must; die with Christ ever more defi-
nitely and decisively so that the “new man” may live more
wholly and sincerely. (Therefore we should always bring
along a specific resolution—if it were only to practice more
patience amid daily trials—and, as it were, lay it on the paten
at the offertory.)

To die in order to live: that is what the candle does. It lives

by giving light, only because it constantly dies by melting and

consuming itself. And in doing so it also tells us (and that is
perhaps the nicest part of it) how we are to offer ourselves
with Christ, suffering and dying with Flim. Without fuss,

then, quietly and without complaint as the candle does, be



THE TRIPLE CRY FOR MERCY 61

intent upon one thing only: to live more intimately with

Christ, letting your light shine to make others cheerful and

at peace.

The burning candle on the altar of sacrifice is you

!

Look at

it, imitate it. From the strength of Christ’s sacrifice die and

live with Him!

28 . . . THE TRIPLE CRY FOR MERCY

If you have ever been a Mass server, you will remember how
you had to pay close attention at this quick dialog with the

priest, the Kyrie, so as not to become mixed up. You couldn’t
just repeat the priest’s words, you had to stick to the text:

Kyrie once, Christe twice, then Kyrie, eleison again. The final

Kyrie you had to leave to him. (You may have heard the mean
old joke of a Mass server that here we have the 1 reason why
girls can’t serve: they would find it too hard to let another

always have the last word!)

Whatever you thought about the arrangement at the time,

it was no mere whim on the part of those who composed the
Mass text. There are nine invocations: three times Kyrie,

eleison, three times Christe, eleison, and three times Kyrie,

eleison . When these nine appeals are said alternately, contrary
to the original plan still commonly followed by the choir at
High; Mass, then naturally the uneven numbers (hence also

the ninth or last) fall to the priest, and the even numbers

to the server or whoever makes the responses. Now that you
are grown up, you no longer worry about that technical ques-



62 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

tion. Rather, you will ask: Why this triple cry to the Lord
for mercy at the beginning of Mass ?

There is an answer to this question in the catechism which

has been there for over a thousand years. It says that this

number nine has something to do with the Blessed Trinity:

the first three invocations are addressed to the Father, the

next three to God the Son, and the last three to the Holy
Spirit. As beautiful and venerable as this may sound, we
know today that such reference to the Blessed Trinity was
made later on. Originally it was meant quite differently,
namely as a ninefold appeal to Christ; and about this again

there was nothing in the catechism.

These invocations at the beginning of the Mass are the

remnant of an ancient litany in which the priest mentioned

one by one the various needs of Christendom and of the

parish, for example, the conversion of the pagans and the

Jews, the return of separated brethren, the consolation of the

sorrowing, the blessing of the fields; and each time the con-

gregation would call down Christ’s mercy with the Greek
cry Kyrie, eleison (the custom began in the East). In the

ancient litanies it was quite common to address invocations to
Christ. Later on when this public expression of common
needs was discontinued (unfortunately) and only the answers

of the people remained, the familiar nine was chosen to have

a round number. This also made it possible to introduce a
little variety without spoiling the symmetry. The three middle
invocations could begin with the Latin Christe instead of the

Greek Kyrie.

This then is the meaning of the nine invocations at the

beginning of Mass: right at the start of the holy Sacrifice we
present to Christ all our needs and anxieties along with those

of our family and of the great family of God, the Church,

with which we are united, and thus call down His mercy upon



STANDING DURING THE GOSPEL 63

the world and upon each individual soul. As noted above, these

invocations were first made in behalf of others, for the pagans,

Jews and schismatics, for those in exile, for the suffering and

afflicted in general. Therefore the Greek appeal is correctly

translated by “Lord, have mercy!” and the “on us” usually

found added in our missals and prayer books is not there at all.

The best part about these invocations at the beginning of
Mass is that they are so quickly heard. Only a few minutes

after we have called upon the Lord, He appears in our midst
to renew the work of His mercy. As once upon the Cross, so

now upon the altar our Savior extends His loving arms to
embrace all human misery. I could well imagine a pious
Christian fervently repeating to himself after the consecra-

tion the appeals of the Kyrie, eleison : For the holy Church

I pray and for those who do not yet know her or no longer
care to know her: Lord, have mercy! For those suffering in
this parish I pray, for the poor, the sick, the sinners: Lord,

have mercy

!

For my little daughter I pray, she is so sick: Lord,
have mercy

!

29 ... STANDING DURING THE GOSPEL

It is a rule of courtesy, as we already learned in childhood,
that when a person of higher rank passes or enters where we
are seated, we rise and stand and thus show our respect. This
rule also holds in the house of God. Thus when the priest
leaves the sacristy and goes to the altar, the congregation does

not remain kneeling or sitting but stands in reverence for

him who represents Christ among them.



64 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

Another time during the Mass when all stand is at the
Gospel. There are two reasons for this, I believe. The one is
clear from what we have already said. At the Gospel One
truly of higher rank comes to us; for the first time the Lord

appears it is by His word, and not in person as later at the

consecration. We are listening not merely to the inspired
words of an apostle as at the Epistle (that is why we may
then sit, listening attentively), but to the living and life-giving

utterances of our divine Master. There is hardly a Gospel

which does not contain the words: “Jesus said. . . .” Out of

reverence for Him who, as it were, opens His mouth again
and speaks into our ears and hearts, we stand and listen. If
the Gospel is not to be read again in the vernacular, we
should follow the reading or singing of the Latin text in our

missal.

But our standing at the Gospel has another meaning. What
the Lord here tells us is not merely the “glad tidings” (that is

the meaning of the word evangelium from the Greek); it is

also an order, a command. What we hear we must carry out
in our private or family life that the world may be ever more
filled with the spirit of the Gospel. When a person appears
before his supervisor to receive an urgent command, he will

not sit down or kneel; by a standing posture he will want to
express that he is ready stante pede to carry out whatever is

commanded. With a like spirit of cheerful readiness, with the

spirit of a lay apostle, we should listen to the Gospel, standing
attentively. The knights of the Middle Ages used to bare
their swords and hold them aloft during the Gospel. That

conveyed the same idea. They wanted to show their readiness

to fight for the spread or defense of the Gospel in the world.

But why, you may ask, have we then been taught to kneel
reverently and not to stand at the moment when our Lord ap-
pears in person, when the bell tinkles for the consecration?



THE "GENERAL PRAYER" 65

Here I must first tell you—perhaps to your surprise—that for
many centuries it actually was customary to stand at the con-

secration and it is still today the practice in the East. During

the Holy Year Pope Pius XII assisted at a Byzantine High

Mass in St. Peter’s; he attracted the attention of the faithful

of the Latin rite because he remained standing at the conse-

cration. In the West the feeling of our human littleness and
unworthiness before the eternal King gradually grew so strong

that a posture indicating respect and self-abasement, that is,

kneeling, was preferred. And this too, I think, serves a good
purpose.

30 . . . THE "GENERAL PRAYER" AFTER THE SERMON

In European countries it was a custom, and still is in some

churches, to recite in common a prayer for the needs and
necessities of all Christendom after the Sunday sermon. It

was known as the “General Prayer.” Unfortunately the custom
has lapsed in many places, and neither pastor nor faithful
seem to realize how much they have lost in this thousand-
year-old treasure of the Mass liturgy.

What connection has this General Prayer with the Mass?
Christians of past centuries had the idea that the readings

with which the Mass begins must end with a great prayer of

petition for all members of the Church and their needs. We
still have one instance of such an ancient and venerable read-

ing service closing with a series of solemn prayers. On Good



66 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

Friday after the third lesson, namely the Passion according

to St. John (and the sermon, if there is one) is finished, there

follow the “great petitions” for the various members and needs

of the Church. Here we meet some of the most impressive
prayers in the Church’s liturgy. These prayers give the original

model for the General Prayer.

The custom later lapsed in Rome, and its function was
taken over by the Kyrie-litany at the beginning of Mass. Be-

yond the Alps, in France, in England and Germany, the old

Roman custom of alternate prayer between priest and people
for the Church’s needs was kept throughout the Middle

Ages. In the sixteenth century St. Peter Canisius gave this

litany-like prayer a definitive form, as it is still recited in some

European churches.

What may have been the reason or purpose for this ancient
custom of closing the reading section of the Mass with con-

gregational prayers of petition? It was this, I believe: at the

entrance to the sacrificial part of the Mass, the heart of the

people, grown quiet and meditative during the readings and

the sermon, should be reminded that what now follows is in a
way the great reservoir for all needs and anxieties, one’s own
and especially the greater needs of the Church and of the

world. Now One other will pray and petition for us and our
necessities, God’s own beloved Son who gave His life for us.
The idea this General Prayer wished to convey has, I fear,

been lost sight of by many good Catholics. They may have
their trials, for example, a child taking ill suddenly. It is indeed

a consolation for them to bring their grief to our Blessed

Mother or to the Little Flower (surely a real and thoroughly

Catholic consolation). But the great source of consolation,

to which all devotion to Mary and the saints should lead us,

is no longer fully alive and uppermost in their consciousness,

namely, the consoling thought that tomorrow morning they



THE "GENERAL PRAYER" 67

can bring their grief to the one refuge of all affliction that may
befall the family of God—the extended arms of our Savior on
the altar.

It is gratifying to note that recently various attempts have

been made to revive the General Prayer after the Sunday

sermon. The best I have seen was in a parish church in Paris.
There every Sunday after the sermon the petitions inscribed

by the faithful in the course of the week in a large book which

lies open for that purpose in the vestibule of the church are

publicly read. It was remarkable what was recorded on the

two pages open before me, often in crude and faulty lines,

of the soul’s trials in a large city: That I may find my father
again; That a sinner find peace and be converted; That I may
not succumb to temptations; Grant, O Lord, that I may see;
Have mercy, O Lord, on my poor daughter and provide an-
other job for her unfortunate husband; For the conversion of

my husband.
I am sure that when this list of needs is read off on Sunday

after the sermon, no one need be told why it is done at this
point of the Mass. Each one will feel in his heart how hu-
manity’s suffering here flows into the one great saving harbor,

into the lovingly extended and mercifully uplifted arms of our

crucified Savior.



31 . . . BREAD AND WINE FOR HOLY MASS

That for the sacred mysteries of the altar in which we
participate at least every Sunday real bread is required, bread

from an oven like the bread on our table at home (only that
now for a thousand years it is unleavened), and real wine that
comes from cellars and barrels like every other wine—to this
we have perhaps not given enough thought. So essential are
bread and wine that the priest in a concentration camp, for

example, with the best intentions and with all his sacred

powers, could not celebrate Mass unless he had somehow

secured a little bread and a few drops of wine.

In ancient times the connection between the holy Sacrifice

and common bread and wine was much more obvious. Per-
sons still brought bread and wine along from home (there
was no difference between the bread for the holy table and

the bread on their kitchen table). After the sermon they

would carry it in a solemn offertory procession to the altar.

They could not forget that real bread (they had baked it

themselves) and real wine (they had taken it from their own
barrel or had bought it at a local wine shop) belong to the

Mass. With profound interior joy they marvelled how the
Lord had chosen “bread from our fields and wine from our

vineyards” to be changed into His sacred Body and Blood

at the mystery on the altar renewing His Sacrifice on the Cross.

But why did our Savior join this mystery so intimately to
bread and wine? Many answers may be given, and you can
perhaps recall one or the other from your catechism instruc-

68



BREAD AND WINE FOR HOLY MASS 69

tions years ago. Bread and wine are the noblest and most

indispensable, the most easily obtainable and most widely

found products of the earth. Good reasons surely; but I want
to add two more which you hear mentioned less often, yet are

worth thinking about.

There is no other product of the earth that embodies more

of the hardship and sweat of labor, and at the same time more

harvest joy and human gratitude, than do bread and wine.
Year after year, when in fall the last load of wheat or grapes

is brought home, then we experience that satisfaction anew.
We feel as if a part of ourselves were*in the sheaves wrung
from the earth with so much labor. Every time the priest at
the altar reverently lifts up the paten on which lies the white

piece of sacrificial bread grown in our fields, or when he

raises the chalice with wine from our vineyards at the begin-

ning of Christ’s Sacrifice, it is as if he lifted us up and offered

us in the bread and wine, together with all our work and

hardships, so that we too may be changed and transformed
ever more perfectly into the one Sacrifice of Christ.

The second reason.The bread on the altar is kneaded to-
gether out of many distinct and separate kernels; the wine on
the altar is pressed out of many distinct and separate grapes.
So the congregation gathered about the altar, in virtue of the

bread and wine which are no longer bread and wine but

the living Body and Blood of Christ, should come together

ever more firmly in love, forming one great Body of which

Christ is the Head. This approach was very dear to the early

Christians. St. Augustine never tired of impressing it upon

his parishioners. Today, too, our sincerity in going to church

and holy Communion must prove itself, not with mere
pious sentiments, but by an increasingly unselfish willing-

ness to help one another. Through the Mystery of the altar

we must become meshed together ever more closely, not
alone with Christ but among ourselves in Christ.



70 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

You see, then, the Lord did not select bread and wine from
among the thousands of creatures for the holiest act of wor-
ship without purpose. Manifold and profound meanings lie

beneath the choice; one must only give it a little thought. The
bread and wine represent us who should put on the Sacrifice
of Christ, the bread and wine represent the community with

which we must be identified through the same holy Sacrifice.
Perhaps you now understand a little better what mother

meant without saying so (for she had much reverence toward
what is sacred) when she taught you to handle table bread
carefully and almost ^ith reverence. Deep down in her heart
she was thinking of the inexpressibly holy service for which

the Lord had chosen this creature. A Christian really should
not be able to look upon bread and grapes and wine without

thinking of their noble, character, their selection for the most

sacred Mystery of the altar. There is a little poem by a Flemish

priest, Guido Gezelle, that reads:

Who could behold the grain
And not think of It;
What noble food it is,
And not think of It!

Who could behold the wine
And not think of It;
What noble drink it is,
And not think of It!

Who could a Christian be
And not think of It;
That Christ’s Flesh and Blood It is,

And not think of It.



32 . . . THE DROPS OF WATER ADDED TO THE WINE
AT MASS

You may have been a Mass server once and can easily recall
when you were serving alone. In one hand you held the cruet

with wine and in the other the cruet with water; and the

priest, after pouring the wine into the chalice, cautiously added

a few drops of water. Since that time you simply take it for

granted Sunday after Sunday that in the sacred drama such

should be done.

Yes, I believe there are not many people, even among
former Mass servers, who understand the meaning of the
action. Does it want to remind us that it was customary in

the East and in the West, too, to mix water with wine? Indeed,

it tells more. If you are used to following the Mass with your

missal and can recall the prayer the priest says when he
pours that water into the chalice, then you know: the water

is meant to represent the sacred humanity of Christ which

was inseparably united with the Second Person of the God-

head, as inseparably as these few drops of water are united

with the wine. This is a very good and very ancient answer;

it comes from the time when the Church had to contend
hotly against the heretics in favor of the two natures in Christ.

But there is a better, more ancient, and truer explanation.

The water that is poured into the chalice at the offertory was
in the earliest days, like the bread and wine—and in our
days the money offering—a sacrificial gift of the people,
brought to the altar by the chanters in the choir. It was

considered a symbolic offering, a gift in which the people saw

71



72 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

themselves represented. The action had a connection with the
figurative language of Sacred Scripture which compares the

nations to “many waters” (Apoc. 17:15).
Probably this is not so clear to you at first sight, the figure

has to sink slowly into one’s mind. Do we not also use the
expression “a sea or ocean of people” for an immense crowd;

or that they “stream together” and move like “waves”? The
people, as it were, by this drop of water bring themselves to

the altar. With this last, little gift sunk into Christ’s chalice
is very clearly expressed what any offering is meant to indicate

at this point of the Mass, be it only a nickel or dime placed on

the altar or dropped into the collection box. All such offering

of the people has only one meaning: to enter into, to be

completely united with, to be submerged entirely into Christ’s

Sacrifice, just as the drops of water are lost in the wine of

Christ’s chalice.

With this explanation is also related the blessing pro-

nounced over the water. This is not meant primarily for the

water, but for the people whom the water symbolizes. This is
shown by the fact that the rest of the water is afterwards

poured away; blessed water would be treated differently. And
it becomes more evident from another fact, namely, that the

blessing is omitted at Requiem Masses, just as the blessing at

the end of Mass, because all the blessings and prayers in these

Masses are pointed toward the departed.

I once read of a chaplain who “hit the nail on the head” in
explaining the subject. He impressed the point upon his
audience by saying: “The drop of water, that’s me.” You might
well repeat to yourself this revealing little sentence while wit-

nessing the unpretentious ceremony at the altar. And it might
suddenly appear crashingly clear what is taking place, viz.,

each holy Mass should submerge us more deeply into Christ’s

holy Sacrifice—into the death and into the life of Jesus.



33 . . . THE MASS "COSTS" SOMETHING

The word “costs” is given in quotation marks. This is to

show that the question as sometimes put by thoughtless

Catholics, “What does the Mass cost?,” must not be understood

literally. For it would be most unbecoming to speak of the

Mass, the most ineffable Mystery of our holy faith, as some-

thing we could buy, like a pound of butter or a yard of cloth.

Hence this way of speaking is not only improper, it is also

incorrect. Who on earth could estimate in human fashion the
value of Christ’s redeeming Sacrifice, or attempt to pay for

it! That would be as if a child should want to reckon up and

pay for the love of its parents—only more incongruous and
impossible.

“Yes, but it is customary to give the priest some money to

have a Mass said,” you will say. That is right. It is a custom

from early Christian days, only it was not money the faithful

then offered the priest but things for his kitchen and for the

poor who were entrusted to him. Such items, however, are not
considered as payment for the Mass or for saying the Mass,

as when you ask a workman what you owe him for his serv-
ices. It is an offering, and here a special sacrificial offering, by

which you express your particular share in this “your” Mass.

The Mass stipend (.Stipendium is the Latin name for the
offering) is therefore no payment or compensation, but an

73



74 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

offering first and foremost directed to God. Picture it to your-

self in this way: at the Mass being said according to your

intention you go up to the altar in person and place your

special offering upon it as a sign of your own intimate and
devout participation, a gift to God but for the use of the priest
(or when he does not need it, for the poor). A poor man is
far less ashamed to take a gift from the altar or from a priest

than from a neighbor, before whom he would rather conceal
his poverty.

One thing is true about this whole problem which I grant
you without further ado, and we priests admit it among our-
selves when we come to speak about the subject: it is hard
to talk about “money” in connection with the Mass. Yet it

can be done when the right spirit prevails on both sides; and
that is, thank God, present in most cases. I could not well

imagine a priest accepting offerings from the faithful and

putting it into his pocketbook like any other “well-earned”

money, unmindful that a social responsibility is attached to

this more than to other earnings. The spiritual implications of
the offering are clear in the minds of most lay people. It is

best seen when a priest wants to refuse an offering for a Mass.
Every priest knows the answer he hears in such cases from

the mouths of even the poorest: “No, Father, that won’t do.

I must give something.” How well the purpose of the offering
is here implied, for at bottom it does not pertain to the priest at

all but to God; or the other equally significant answer: “Please

take it and give it to one who needs it.”
I shall never forget the picture a confrere once sketched for

me. There was a modest widow, a washerwoman, who despite
her poverty would not allow her stipend to be refused because

she also wanted to “do something” for “her” Mass. Brushing

aside all remonstrances, she insisted on paying her “debt” by

bringing twenty or thirty pennies at a time. With what com-



HOLDING THE HOST AND CHALICE ALOFT 75

passion must God not have looked upon the intention for
which this poor widow so fervently united her heart and her

sacrifice (in the fullest sense of the word) to the Sacrifice of

His Son.

34 . . . HOLDING THE HOST AND THE CHALICE ALOFT

The reason for this is quite simple, you will say. The action
belongs quite naturally to the consecration, for the priest wants

to show us the Body of Christ and the chalice with the precious

Blood. All of us in church should adore the Lord present on

the altar. Good, we will let this explanation stand for the
moment; it surely is not wrong. Now if you paid close atten-
tion, you must have noticed that the priest later on,

immediately before the Pater Noster, lifts up the Host and
the chalice once more, this time not one after the other,

but both together; this time not high above his head but

only a few inches before his breast. This second elevation can-

not be meant for public showing, and still it seems important.

In some European countries there is the practice, a very old

one, of calling attention to the action by ringing a bell. What
may be the meaning, let us ask for the present, of this “little
elevation,” as it is called to distinguish it from the “great ele-

vation” at the consecration?

We discover it quickly, I believe, if we consult our missal
and see what the priest prays. There we read: “Through Him,
and with Him, and in Him, is to Thee, God the Father
Almighty, in the union of the Holy Spirit, all honor and

glory forever and ever.” And the people respond: “Amen.”



76 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

The words form the solemn conclusion to the prayers en-
circling the elevation (with the Pater Noster the Communion
service begins). Praise is the main motif, just as many of our
prayers end with an expression of praise: “Glory be to the

Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” However,

these prayers before and after the consecration are more im-

portant and greater and more sacred than any other prayer

because here we do more than pray; here, in addition to mere
prayer, we really and truly present “an acceptable offering” to
the eternal and living God. That everybody may be aware of
it, the priest at the solemn closing words takes hold of the

Gifts, of the Body and Blood of Christ, holds them aloft, and

presents them to the heavenly Father as our sacrificial offering.

It is as if we said: Behold, Father, here upon the altar we
offer not merely our poor human words, here we offer Thee
the great Gift of our praise and thanksgiving. Here we offer

to Thee the One who, far better than our stammering lips, pro-
claims to Thee mighty and worthy praise and thanks from

eternity to eternity.

This then is the meaning of the “little elevation” of the

sacred Species at the end of the Canon. The lifting is not a

gesture of exhibiting but of offering; it is the simplest and most

significant sign of offering in the Mass liturgy. If this were

the only gesture used in the whole of Mass, one could tell

what the Mass is.

Now if you would also interpret the “great elevation” at
the consecration as a gesture of offering, I would have no

objections. Time and again since this elevation was introduced

(around the year 1200, many hundreds of years after the

“little elevation”), pious Christians have regarded it as a gesture

of offering. The priest lifts up the sacred Gifts, so they said,

not only that we may see them (that would not be absolutely



"BLESSING" THE HOST AND CHALICE 77

necessary); he bears them, as it were, in the name of all,

before the throne and to the heart of our heavenly Father.

In this connection the venerable Capuchin, Martin of

Cochem, tells his readers the naive but well authenticated

story of the pious English king, Henry III (1207-1272), who
lived soon after the introduction of the elevation ceremony.

With pious fervor the king insisted on going up to the altar

at each consecration to support the arms of the priest “to the

great joy of his heart.” Surely he wanted to say what rings

true still today from the heart and lips of every pious layman

:

I too offer Thee, O heavenly Father, with the priest at the
altar “an acceptable sacrifice” in Thy Son.

35 . . . "BLESSING" THE HOST AND THE CHALICE
AFTER THE CONSECRATION

If you observed the priest at the altar thoughtfully, would

not those crosses over the Host and the chalice after the con-

secration have prompted the inquiry: Why? That the priest
blesses the bread and wine before the consecration is simple

and easy to understand; but that after the consecration he

continues the action and makes one cross after the other over

the Host and the chalice seems strange. For he now no longer
has mere bread and wine before him, but Christ’s Body and

Blood, the living Lord who is sacrificed. Would anyone
imagine that the Body and Blood of the Lord still need a

blessing? Dare the priest presume to give a blessing to his

Lord and God?



78 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

The answer is clear to one who knows that these signs of
the Cross in the Canon of the Mass before and after the con-

secration do not at all bless the gifts, but merely point to them.

Imagine the priest standing according to ancient fashion

behind the altar with his face to the people (as the Holy Father

does in St. Peter’s and as one sees more frequently nowadays).

As always at solemn liturgical prayer, he now has his hands
raised to heaven. The prayer he is saying has this distinction
over all other prayers that it does not merely rise from the

heart of the priest and of all who pray with him to the heart of
our Father in heaven. It is a prayer which at the same time

presents a Gift to God on high, the most precious we can
think of, His only and most beloved Son who died for us.
Now that we may not overlook so unique a distinction and

privilege, the priest behind the altar points solemnly to the

Gifts with his right hand every time he mentions them, as if

to show them to us and to present them to the heavenly

Father. But since a mere pointing gesture would look rather

common at so solemn an occasion, priests in the course of time
began to make small signs of the Cross over both Species
together, or over each separately. What gesture could more
worthily point out the Body and Blood sacrificed on the

Cross ?

It is not, therefore, a matter of no importance whether or

not you understand the message of these crosses. They want

to tell you something worthy of note. They want to tell you

that you need not appear empty-handed before Him who has
poured out His blessings upon you. (How humiliating to
come with empty hands to a feast in honor of a dear friend

who has been very good to you!) You have a worthy Gift of

gratitude; it lies there before the priest on the altar. Repeatedly

he points to it with a reverent Sign of the Cross, as if to say

each time:



LAST WORDS OF CANON SUNG ALOUD 79

Look, Father, from Thy heavenly throne,

Look graciously upon us here;

We offer Thee Thy only Son,
A pleasing Sacrifice, most dear.

36... THE LAST WORDS OF THE CANON SUNG
ALOUD

For somewhat more than a thousand years the decisive,

central portion of the Mass, the Canon, has no longer been

sung aloud as during the first centuries. It is always recited

silently. By the sudden silence of the priest at the altar the

faithful are made to feel that they should enter with profound

reverence and fervent prayer into this holiest phase of the

sacred mystery. Only one small phrase was from the beginning

not included under the rule of silence—the final four words
with which the Eucharistic praise ends, the words of which we
spoke when explaining the “little elevation.” These the priest
sings aloud after the long silence of the Canon: Per omnia

saecula saeculorum. Because the singing of the Pater Noster
follows immediately, one may get the false idea that this Per
omnia saecula saeculorum serves as an introduction to the

Pater Noster. The Per omnia saecula saeculorum with its
Amen concludes the Canon; the Pater Noster begins the Com-
munion service.

Why this calculated exception for these four tiny words
when the Canon began to be said silently ? Their message can
hardly be an adequate reason. Indeed it is a great and impres-



80 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

sive thought that it is to God who rules “from eternity to
eternity” that our prayer and sacrifice ascend. But this truth

is expressed at the end of any liturgical prayer; and if it were

meant to be emphasized, then the whole concluding formula,

and not merely the last four words, should be sung aloud.

So we seek another reason. When the change to a silent
Canon came, the people were to retain their ancient right of

consenting with a solemn Amen to what was being done and
prayed at the altar. But if this Amen was not to hang in the air,
then the “signal” upon which it'followed had to be sung aloud.

See, our seemingly useless investigation was not a waste of

time. Now you understand why the ancients and why our
Holy Father in his encyclical on the liturgy spoke so much
about that little Amen before the Pater noster. It is really the
most important Amen in our whole liturgy. By it the people,
to use a famous comparison of St. Augustine, put their signa-

ture to the Eucharistic event transpiring at the altar. By it they

show that, although the priest is the only consecrator, he is not

the only offerer of the divine sacrificial Lamb. Behind him the

“holy people of God” not only prayed silently along, they co-

offered with him what he held in his hands. That is what they

want to express with the loud and solemn cry: Yes, so be it!

Your prayer was our prayer, your Gift our Gift.

The early Christians loved to stress this great Eucharistic
Amen . Already in the oldest account of the Roman Mass, left
to us by Justin Martyr (died about 165), we read: “When the
thanksgiving is over, the whole assembly present cries out

:

AmenP Several hundred years later we are told how the Amen
at the close of the Canon re-echoed from the walls of the basilica

“like thunder from heaven.”

Is it not a pity then that most people know nothing at all
about this most important Amen of the Mass, and that gen-
erally in our churches it is anything but an Amen by the peo-



HOLY COMMUNION AT HIGH MASS 81

pie, resounding from the walls of the church like thunder from

heaven. I cannot help saying this: it always pains me when I
am at a High Mass and the “holy people of God” are repeatedly
addressed from the altar while they keep mum in their pews

—

even at this, their most important and venerable Amen they
allow themselves to be represented by the choir or a Mass

server. Must it always remain this way?

37... HOLY COMMUNION DISTRIBUTED AT HIGH
MASS

I well remember a beautiful Sunday morning years ago. I

was sitting in the office of a rectory when quite unwillingly I
became a listener to the conversation between certain men of
the parish who were waiting with the collection money in the
corridor outside. At first I merely sensed that they were an-

noyed over something, but soon I caught a few scattered re-

marks like “never before” and “new-fangled nuisance in the

Church”; and in between there was, to my surprise, repeated
reference to “lazy women.”

On a sudden I had figured out the argument. It concerned
the practice, recently introduced at the parish, of affording the

opportunity to receive holy Communion during the Sunday
High Mass. Obviously the title “lazy women” referred to the
few who had responded, little suspecting what grief they
caused some other parishioners (imagine! a regular lengthen-

ing of the High Mass by three minutes!). They were simply
too lazy, so the men thought, to make the sacrifice of getting



82 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

up earlier, a sacrifice which had always been associated with

receiving holy Communion.

How did it come about that holy Communion is now again
distributed everywhere during the Sunday High Mass? First
of all, to my knowledge it is nowhere officially stated that going
to Communion and rising early belong together. I cannot be-
lieve that God would take it amiss if a hard-working man or
a sickly woman who perhaps could not fall asleep till early
morning would first “sleep over” and then try to celebrate Sun-

day in the best possible way, that is, by sharing not only in the

holy Sacrifice but also in the sacrificial Banquet. It is my opin-
ion,. moreover, that God is more pleased with such “lazy
women” (and men) than with those who berate them.

Secondly, it was regrettable that formerly at the High Mass,

the most important and most solemn sacrificial celebration of

the week, the faithful did not realize that the function at the

altar was also a sacrificial meal. Our religious education grad-

ually remedied this condition. Particularly for those who reg-
ularly attend Sunday High Mass, it is a gratifying experience

to see how the Mystery at which they assist invites them to
enter into its innermost chamber, to approach the ever-ready

and richly spread Holy Table of God’s children! They catch

the soft call of love which comes to their ears at the Ecce,

Agnus Dei and perceive the comforting Voice that says: “If

anyone thirst, let him come to Me and drink!” And in their
hearts they know how from this fountain wells forth Sunday’s
deepest joy.

Thirdly, as regards the lengthening of the High Mass caused

by the distribution of Communion, it seems so foolish that

anyone should haggle with the Lord about a few minutes (a

vice not restricted to men only; there are whole parishes where
the new pastor is greeted with the urgent wish to make the

services “short and snappy”). Would these impatient men and



INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION TO PATER NOSTER 83

women be pleased if their guests to dinner would restlessly eye
their watches half an hour after arrival ? There are certain rules

for good behavior.

Surely it is proper that changes in divine services be not

made according to whim and fancy. But there are innovations
so reasonable that one may ask why it was not always done
that way. I believe the distribution of holy Communion at
High Mass is one of these.

38 . . . THE INTRODUCTION AND THE CONCLUSION
TO THE PATER NOSTER

When you intend to pray an Our Father you usually make
the Sign of the Cross, you say the prayer with its seven peti-

tions, and after the last you add Amen. Then, unless you want

to continue with the Hail Mary, you again make the Sign of
the Cross and your prayer is finished.

But when the priest sings the Pater Noster at the beginning
of the Communion service at Mass, he makes it unusually
formal. First he addresses the people with the solemn invita-

tion: Oremusl Let us pray! Even then he does not immediately

begin the Our Father, he inserts a formal introduction: “Di-
rected by saving precepts and schooled in divine teaching, we
make bold to say.” Nor is the prayer finished after this intro-
duction and the seven petitions are sung; the last petition is

drawn out into an after-prayer beginning with the word

Libera. Only with this prolongation do we have the usual
closing (during which the Host is broken). Why this singular
formality ?



84 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

I will explain it by an example. Imagine you had at home a

very precious, a very rare gem. It was a very old family treas-

ure and you had the custom at family feasts to pass this spar-

kling family jewel proudly around among the guests. Now
would you let this costly gem go from hand to hand just
as it is, bare and naked? Surely not. You would know too well
how easily your treasure might be lost; long ago you would
have had it set by a jeweler and encased in a fine frame and

thus shown to your guests.

In this way one must understand the caution and formality

with which the Church surrounds the Our Father. Among her
treasures of many thousand years, of which one is more beau-
tiful than the other, the Our Father is the most beautiful and

venerable and precious. Jesus Himself entrusted it to His

Spouse so that with its simple and yet inexhaustible words she

might teach her children in all times and places how to pray
to their Father in heaven. Because the Church is so proud of

this family treasure, because she esteems it so highly, she is

very cautious about it. In ancient times she exposed it publicly

only when the family was alone by itself, as at the holy Sacri-
fice. At the beginning of the Communion service of holy Mass
it serves well as the family table prayer of God’s children; by it

they humbly beg the sacred Food from the altar, saying: “Give

us this day our daily bread.” Now lest this precious prayer gem
be worn thin by thoughtless hands, the Church surrounds it

with the “casting” of an introduction and a conclusion.

Whenever the uninitiated were present—be they even her
own candidates for baptism—the ancient Church resorted to
the silent Our Father. To our own day we have such “silent
Pater Nosters” in the liturgy; you must have noticed them at
the bier, for example, or at the grave, when only the beginning
and end is said aloud. Only shortly before their baptism did



INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION TO PATER NOSTER 85

the candidates find out in a special touching ceremony known
as the “handing over of the Lord’s Prayer” about this family

treasure. It was like an initiation into a precious secret; to copy

it was strictly forbidden; only on the “tables of the heart” could

the holiest of prayers be inscribed. Each Christian had to learn

it by heart and on a special, solemn occasion recite it in the

presence of the congregation, together with the Apostles’ Creed.

In the recitation of these two formulas by the sponsors at bap-

tism, we have the last venerable trace of the “handing over of
the Lord’s Prayer” and of the Apostles’ Creed.

It seems to me that all of us would do well to take to heart
this careful, reverent manner with regard to the Our Father.

First of all, at its place in holy Mass we ought to pray it with
a fervent, silent heart as a precious heirloom from our divine

Master. We ought to pray it with a heart humble and child-
like, and as deeply fervent as the melody to which the priest

sings it. (That we are permitted to join in the recitation of the
Our Father at a community Mass is excellent; for we must
never forget that it is our common table prayer.)
But it would be still better if, from the Church’s respectful

use of the Lord’s Prayer, we would learn something for private
recitation. Couldn’t we Catholics treat this prayer with more

care and tenderness? Flaven’t we perhaps “worn it thin” by a
too frequent, thoughtless repetition, so that for many of us it
serves merely as a “form” or as an empty “prayer pocket” into

which we can stick anything? Actually each Our Father should

be framed in an invisible, reverent setting, after the example

of the liturgy of the Mass. Each Our Father from our lips

should be uttered in the spirit that prompted the introduction

to the Pater Noster: “Directed by saving precepts and schooled
in divine teaching, we make bold to say: Our Father. . . .”



39 . . . THE PAX EMBRACE BEFORE COMMUNION

It is now many years since I was first struck by the sudden
pause in the sacred action between the Agnus Dei and Com-
munion at a solemn High Mass. When I saw it for the first
time, I hardly trusted my eyes. The celebrant turned away
from the sacred Gifts upon the altar and did something that

seemed so strange and mysterious in this strict and solemn

world of sacred ceremony: he actually clasped the deacon in

his arms. The latter then left his place and did the same to the
subdeacon standing below.

We can better understand this “kiss of peace” (as the liturgy
calls it) if we realize that what we see in our day is only a
remnant of the full ancient form of the ceremony. The Kiss
of Peace before holy Communion was something not only for
the clergy, but for everyone present. Not just the priests around

the altar, the faithful too back in the church embraced one an-

other in the holy Kiss of Peace, the men by themselves and the
women by themselves.

If for a moment you consider at what point in the Mass the
Kiss of Peace is given, you will grasp at once its wonderful

meaning and validity. It serves as the overture to holy Com-
munion; and each one in church should feel that the sacred

Mystery of Christ’s love to which he is again invited is not

merely the mystery of a more intimate personal union with

God, but likewise the mystery of a more intimate communion

with all the brethren; for the Lord instituted It as food for a

86



THE PAX EMBRACE 87

fraternal Banquet. At any earthly table refined people feel a

hearty intimacy with one another. How much more must this
feeling envelop the Table at which that Love is shared that

made us brothers and sisters in divine Blood.
This profound reality the liturgy of the ancient Church

sought to impress upon the faithful through the practice of a

mutual embrace before Communion, each with his neighbor

whoever he might be, high or low, friendly or unsympathetic.

“We who partake of this one Table cannot be indifferent to
one another; we are brothers and sisters, God’s family, called
to the sacred family board. Whatever had passed between us,

hatred or dissension, disagreement or coolness, must now cease;
it is the hour of peace. Now is the hour when we are in full
earnest over our mutual love, just as He loved us.”
Quite readily do I see the Kiss of Peace by the people cannot

be re-introduced; our varying sensibilities are against it. There-

fore it becomes most important to preserve the rite about the

altar as a last expression of a grand and profound idea. For us

it should mean an examination of conscience on how and in
what spirit we approach holy Communion.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I cannot help thinking that not a
few good and well-meaning Catholics, when receiving holy

Communion, say silently to themselves (perhaps without ad-

mitting it) : “Those people all around me really hurt the
devotion with which I want to receive my Savior. I would like
it best if I could receive quietly all by myself.” If you feel this

way, you have not yet grasped how intimately “those people
all around” pertain to the Mystery which Christ instituted as

a fraternal Banquet. Next time you see the clergy giving each

other the Kiss of Peace at a solemn Mass, try to search your

conscience to see what is left there of the spirit of the early

Christians who embraced their neighbor before going to Com-
munion. Or perhaps have you become one of those who say:



88 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

“I am not concerned about the other people, if only I have my
Savior.”

This should really be the test of our frequent reception of

holy Communion: not that it fills us with heavenly delights,
no, but that it should slowly, slowly make us more unselfish,
more kind and considerate. For “by this will all men know
that you are My disciples (and are becoming ever more so at
My holy Table), if you have love one for another.”

40 . . . THE BEGINNING OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL AT
THE END OF MASS

If you study up on this point in a scholarly volume, you will

find a striking statement. There you will discover that the

Prolog (so the scholars call the beginning) of St. John’s Gospel

at the end of holy Mass is no more than a concluding blessing.

How did it come about that a Gospel is a blessing, and what
connection has it actually with the different conclusions to the

Mass ?

Where the Mass originally ended can be clearly recognized
even to this day. Still at present the priest abruptly calls out to

the people after the final oration (the Postcommunion) : “Ite,

missa est!”

,

which means: “Go, you are dismissed! The Mass is
over!” Here is real, old-Roman liturgy. Those old Romans
were that way, short and concise; one does not expect it other-

wise from soldiers and farmers.

But when the Mass, with its short, military, old-Roman order

of dismissal, came northward across the Alps to the newly-



ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL AT THE END OF MASS 89

converted Germanic nations, then the abrupt conclusion

seemed somewhat harsh and sudden to people of another

mould. Would it not be better, they thought, if the priest, after
the words of dismissal, would close the holy celebration by

blessing them with the Sign of the Cross? And so began the
custom of adding the priestly blessing; and it fits as if it had

always been there.

But in the course of time even this was not enough. An-

other sort of blessing, “modern” in its day, was asked of the

priest at the end of Mass, the introduction to St. John’s Gospel.

To this idea the pious Middle Ages were rather attached, viz.y
that a blessing could be given not merely by a sign or with a

picture, but also with Christ’s Gospel. This would be, so they

said, almost as powerful as if the blessing were given with the

Body of Christ in the monstrance; for in the Gospel the living

word of the Lord, His living glad tidings, is contained. (Al-

ready the ancient martyr, Bishop Ignatius, said: “I flee to the

Gospel as to the flesh of Christ.”) So they got the idea of using

the beginnings of the four Gospels (the whole would have

been much too long) as formulae for blessings. A special pref-
erence for the solemnly mysterious Prolog of St. John’s Gospel

can readily be understood.

The whole idea was really not too bad. When, for example,
the beginning of St. John’s Gospel was read over a very sick

person, the underlying message was: from the glad tidings of

Jesus Christ, the Savior, with which the Gospel begins, may
consolation and strength and blessings come to you in your

bitter hour of sickness! When during the Corpus Christi pro-
cession the beginning of each of the four Gospels was sung at

one of four altars, the purpose was none other than to call

down upon an ailing world the blessings which flow from the
glad tidings of Christ Jesus, our Savior.

Therefore when the priest, according to a custom originating



90 THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

in the Middle Ages, concludes Mass by reading the Prolog to

St. John’s Gospel, he has no other intention than to bless us

and his whole world in the name of the Word that became
Man and “pitched His tent amongst us” (the literal transla-
tion). What a wonderful message immediately after meeting
the Word-made-Flesh in person! And what a glorious sum-
mary of the entire liturgy: “We saw His glory, glory as of
the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth!”

One thing more. What is to be said about those “old-
fashioned” people who, despite the order of dismissal and the

two last blessings, remain kneeling in church to pray privately

and to make their thanksgiving after holy Communion? I
will tell you with no “beating about the bush.” They deserve to

be praised and to be imitated. Our Holy Father has heartily

and insistently commended the practice in his encyclical on the

liturgy. These “old-fashioned” people have a correct sense; this

sense tells them not to run away helter-skelter after so holy a

reunion (a thing one would never do for a visitor at home).

Rather, we should pause and linger with our Guest, just as
once she lingered to whom He said : “Mary has chosen the bet-
ter part; it shall not be taken from her.”

Yes, I do understand how one who was among the first to
receive in a long line of communicants may be through with
his thanksgiving when the end of Mass has come. But it

always pains me to see the church entirely empty right after
the Last Gospel, even of those who five minutes before had
knelt at the altar rail. It is sad to deprive ourselves of the most

precious minutes of the whole week by foolish haste, minutes

which permit us to behold and invoke in our innermost heart

the glory of the Lord, “the glory of the only-begotten of the

Father, full of grace and truth.”



^Jke <S>acramentö

41 . . . WHY SALT IS PLACED ON THE TONGUE OF
THE CANDIDATE FOR BAPTISM

Didn’t it seem peculiar to you the last time you witnessed a

Baptism for the priest to put a few grains of blessed salt on the

tongue of the persons to be baptized? In any case, since the

individual is usually an infant, the ceremony seems surprising

to the little creature, who sometimes shows it in its own fashion.
Baptismal salt naturally is a symbol, and one with manifold

meanings. Out of the various possibilities I would like to select

one which is less frequently thought of, but which was cer-

tainly included in the early days when our ceremony originated
and when the rite was performed on adults upon entering the
catechumenate.

You may already have heard allusions to it; for there still are
outlying villages in the Balkans where the woman of the house
meets a stranger at the doorsteps with bread and salt in her

hands. Only aftef the visitor has tasted of the bread and the

salt does he enjoy the sacred rights of hospitality.

Here also at the church door is a “stranger” being received

into a family, the biggest and proudest in the whole wide

world. In the name of God’s family, the Church, the priest in
accordance with the ancient custom of our forefathers comes

to the church door and offers him salt.

If you listen carefully you will detect even today how the
giving of salt at Baptism (not only, but also) conveys this

message. For how could it otherwise be explained that the

91



92 THE SACRAMENTS

priest, after offering the salt, greets the new arrival with the
kiss of peace and says to him: Pax tecum

l

Peace be to you!

And the prayer said immediately after giving the salt points
in the same direction. Let this stranger here—that is the sense
of it—when he has become a guest, sit with the children of
the house at our holy Table. The accompanying words and
action, therefore, originally expressed a yearning for the goal

to which the long and arduous road of the catechumenate led,

viz., the holy night of Easter when the newly baptized Chris-
tian for the first time enjoyed the full right of hospitality at the

Table with the children of the house. At the ceremony today

we might well think of First Holy Communion, the day when
our candidate for Baptism will enjoy the same happiness. “God
of our fathers, Thou font of all truth, we pray and beseech
Thee graciously look down upon this Thy servant and now
that he has tasted the first morsel of salt, let him soon satiate

his hunger for heavenly Food.”

Do you now understand what this morsel of salt placed by
the priest on the tongue of the infant means to tell you so

many years after your own Baptism? Once you too received
the rights to hospitality in the family of God’s children and

to the family Table; now you no longer need to 1 “hunger for
the heavenly Food”; the Table is always spread ready for you.

Are you not perhaps a bit thoughtless about this, as if it had

been just a matter of courtesy on God’s part to let you be born

into this world as a child of good Catholic parents? Should

you not rather feel ashamed when you see a convert who has
found only now what you had from childhood, and cannot
adequately express his joy and gratitude? Don’t you think we

all ought to be more happy and more grateful that God in His
unsearchable mercy, without any merit on our part, has called

us to the family and to the Table of His children?



42 ... ANOINTING THE NEWLY-BAPTIZED

One who has followed the rite of Baptism closely will have
observed that the priest, in the course of the ceremonies sur-

rounding the administration of the sacrament, anoints the in-

fant twice with holy oil : once on its throat and neck before the

actual baptism; and again after the sacramental washing on

the top of its head. At first glance it would seem that both

anointings belong together and mean basically the same thing.
In reality they are to be kept strictly apart; for they are so dif-

ferent that they are even—if you paid close attention you would
have noticed it—performed with different holy oils. For the
anointing before Baptism the priest used the oil of catechu-

mens, for the one after Baptism the nobler holy chrism (min-

gled with balsam, and used also for Confirmation).

The first anointing (on breast and back) reminded the early
Christians of the athletic field and the arena contests; it taught

them not to forget that the life of baptized Christians is an

uninterrupted struggle against Satan, who tries with all his
power to re-enter “the house swept and adorned” (Luke n 125).
The anointing on the top of the head means something else,

something more important. From olden days kings and priests
were anointed on the head. A famous picture shows the prophet
Samuel anointing the boy David; he pours the horn of oil over

the head of the youth kneeling before him (they had to call
him from the sheep pasture; he still holds a shepherd’s crook

93



94 THE SACRAMENTS

in his hand). Even today anointing the head is part of the cere-

monial at the crowning of Britain’s kings, according to the old

Catholic rite. And when someone is consecrated bishop and
receives the fullness of the priesthood, his head is anointed in

the course of the ceremonies.

But how does this practice fit in with Baptism, by which one
becomes neither bishop nor king, but merely an ordinary

Christian? Much better perhaps than appears at first sight—

a

fact that becomes apparent as soon as we reflect a little on the
dignity of being “merely an ordinary Christian.” The infant
present now as the sanctifying waters flow over its head and
the sacred words are spoken, according to the Savior’s promise,

is in all truth and reality born anew “by water and the Holy

Spirit.” It is now become a living member of Christ’s Mystical
Body.

In an invisible but real manner Christ’s Easter life is stream-

ing into it, and together with it something of Christ’s kingly

and priestly dignity. Every baptized Christian shares in the

nobility of this family into which he is enrolled by Baptism;

henceforth he may call the only-begotten Son of God “Brother”
and address the Most High as “our Father.” Every baptized

Christian partakes of the priestly dignity of Christ; for he has

the sacred right of sharing in Christ’s wonderful Sacrifice of

the altar, not indeed in the act of consecrating, but by co-offer-

ing and receiving its fruits. True, the little child cannot exer-

cise that right before the age of reason, but for many centuries
it was a custom to place a drop of the Sacred Blood from the

chalice on the infant’s tongue after Baptism in token of its

Christian dignity. And there are churches today where it is still
customary to carry the child three times around the altar so

everyone can see that the child now has family rights at Christ’s
Table.

The newly-baptized child is anointed with holy chrism on



A WHITE GARMENT AT BAPTISM 95

the crown of the head that all may see how, as a member of
Christ, it has received a share in Christ’s royal and priesdy

dignity. It is an effect produced by the same Holy Spirit with

whom Christ was anointed. St. Ambrose, in explaining the
anointing on the crown of the head to his newly-baptized

adults, says very plainly : “Through the grace of the Holy Spirit

we are all anointed to kingship and priesthood.”
Indeed, it is an important sermon this ceremony of anointing

wants to give us thoughtless Christians. There is something

special in being a Christian, even for those who so heartlessly
rattle off the Our Father, who so rarely approach Christ’s altar
on Sunday. The saintly Pope Leo the Great once summed it
up in the memorable words: “Christian, acknowledge your

dignity!”

43 ... A WHITE GARMENT FOR THE NEWLY-BAPTIZED
CHILD

The explanation for this ceremony is not difficult. It would
come spontaneously if we could witness the Baptism of adults
at the restored Easter Vigil, say somewhere in a mission coun-

try, and see them enter church clothed in white robes to assist

at their first Mass and receive their First Holy Communion.
The visible, bright garment symbolizes the wondrous, in-
visible brightness effected by Baptism and serves as a warning

to be most careful with the divine gift, as one is concerned

about a snowy white garment. The priest points this out in be-
stowing it: “Receive this white garment and bear it spodess



96 THE SACRAMENTS

before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ that you

may have eternal life.”
But there is a subtler difficulty. If you last witnessed a Bap-

tism some ten or twenty years ago, you may have trouble re-
calling how the white garment was given to the child. You
may have missed seeing it altogether, for the whole wonderful
rite had been reduced to a few, sad remnants. When the mo-
ment came, the priest used to place on the child the end of

his white stole or even a finger-cloth (often no longer white

from much previous use) . But this, thank God, is changing in
many churches. Since the accompanying words are now intel-
ligently said in the vernacular, would it not be doubly queer

to say to the newly-baptized child: “Receive this white gar-

ment,” while touching it momentarily with the end of the

stole ?

Many churches now provide a special little garment, em-
broidered with appropriate symbols, which the priest places on

the child. Still better, of course, is the practice of making the

baptismal garment the property of the family and using it for

all the children. On its hem the mother embroiders the name
of each child and the date of Baptism so that with the course

of years it becomes a real family treasure, a reminder unto

grateful remembrance each time it is used. (The same holds

for the family baptismal candle. It is not difficult to select days

when it can again be used, e.g., the annual Easter Vigil, the
day of a First Mass or profession or wedding, and finally the

day of death.)

In the case of the family baptismal garment, the mistake

must be avoided which is made by some well-meaning mothers
who think in terms of the bridal dress. As the bride is all
decked out with the new gown for her march up to the altar,
so they put the baptismal dress on the baby for carrying it to

church. It may sound reasonable, but it is entirely wrong. The



A WHITE GARMENT AT BAPTISM 97

baptismal robe is a symbol of the baptismal cleansing received

and as such is solemnly given by the priest to the newly-bap-

tized during the sacramental rite after the actual washing with

water. It would not be right if the little pagan that is carried

into church were already dressed in the clean, bright garment

by which the glory of baptismal grace is symbolized.

Therefore if it is done properly, the sponsor will carry the

baptismal garment on her arm into church. After the final

anointing, she hands it to the priest, who places it on the
infant with her aid. Even externally the child should return

home different in appearance so that all may see more easily
what an extraordinary change took place, how its soul was
washed white in the Blood of the Lamb. For when the child

is again placed in the arms of its mother, she should not only

know by faith, but actually see what an inexpressible mystery
took place in the heart of her babe, into what glory it has been

immersed through holy Baptism.

I could well imagine how a mother, after taking part with a
warm heart in this well-arranged and properly enacted rite,
would, when alone with the quietly breathing infant Christian
by her side after the guests had left, spontaneously recall the

words with which Mother Church gave the baptismal robe

once to herself and say to her babe: “Yes, that I wish and beg

for you, my child, with all my heart on this your day of Bap-
tism, that you bring spotless before the judgment seat of our

Lord Jesus Christ what you received today, so that you may
have life everlasting!”



44... WHY IS THE MOTHER "CHURCHED" AFTER
CHILDBIRTH?

Dear Mrs :

It was a good idea on your part to send this question “to the

right place” (as you put it), for it troubles many mothers. Nor
did you need make long excuses for your alleged “imposition.”
Every zealous teacher welcomes such “imposing” letters in

matters pertaining to his field.

I must indeed compliment you on submitting so practical

and important a question. For there is hardly a ceremony in

our Catholic liturgy which occasions as many erroneous or
twisted notions in the minds of people as the so-called “church-

ing of mothers after childbirth.” You are definitely not the only
young mother who must concede that she looks ahead to this
ceremony with a certain embarrassment. Behind this em-

barrassment lurks the notion that “churching” implies some-

thing shameful. You indicate it in your letter, and I am con-
vinced that many mothers also harbor it, consciously or uncon-
sciously. I can only tell you that it is altogether wrong. The
Church is not two-faced; she teaches, and no one can doubt it,

that Matrimony is holy and a sacrament. And all the acts
proper to marriage are therefore holy.

The meaning of the ceremony is simply this: the mother
comes to church to express her thanks for the first time with

her newly-baptized child in her arms. A Biblical precedent may
be seen in Mary’s presentation of the Child Jesus in the temple.

98



"CHURCHING" AFTER CHILDBIRTH 99

And according to our new American ritual, there is even a
special blessing for the child after that given to the mother. I

am sure there is no need to explain to you or to any mother
how proper it is to show gratitude to God on such an occasion.

If, then, a young mother opens her eyes and ears to what she

experiences in the house of God, she will realize that Mother

Church has no other intention than to rejoice and give thanks

together with her. The very fact that the priest in white stole

meets her at the church door (so the book directs, and so it

should actually be done every time) adds an air of solemnity;

otherwise he does this only for the bishop. Isn’t this reception

at the church door a well-planned form of respect for her ? And
did you know that this “churching” is a mother’s honorable
right ?

The address which the priest then makes to the mother
kneeling before him, the lighted candle he hands her, the

solemn procession to the front and the Magnificat, together

with the special prayers of blessing said at the altar (thank

God, they are now said in the vernacular)—all these speak of
nothing but grateful joy. Let me quote for you only three little
sentences: “Look with kindness,” the priest addresses God,

“on this Thy servant! Joyfully she entered Thy sanctuary to
give thanks. Permit her and her child at the end of this life

to attain to the joys of eternal life!”

You see then, my dear Mrs
,
any embarrassment is

altogether unfounded. Indeed, I should imagine that a mother

who really understood the ceremony would count among the
most precious of her life these moments when with a heart full
of grateful joy she knelt before the altar holding in her arms

the new-born and newly-baptized infant, so sweetly flooded by

the light of the candle. She cannot as yet speak to it about God;

the more must she at this hour before the altar begin to speak

to God unceasingly in its behalf. And what else could her



100 THE SACRAMENTS

motherly prayer be but a repetition of the Church’s prayer:

“May I and my child at the end of this life attain to the joys
of eternal life.”

Besides, do you know that the Church holds another, almost
more beautiful, “Mother Blessing” in store for the expectant

mother? Pardon me if in conclusion my letter gives you a
little “lecture” on this “Blessing before Childbirth.” It is too

bad that most, even good Catholic mothers have never heard

about this treasure.

You may be able to imagine what the Church asks in this
blessing for an expectant mother. She herself is a Mother who
has carried in her womb thousands upon thousands of chil-
dren. She knows the sentiments of the young daughter kneel-

ing at her feet asking for a blessing, and she helps her to pray

for the one thing about which all her thoughts and planning,

all her anxiety and hopes revolve during those weeks—a safe
and happy delivery.

But her prayer does not rest with this motherly concern.

With firm assurance it goes farther and deeper. Mother Church

knows that seeing the much-praised “light of day” can be of

little good to the tiny creature in its mother’s dark womb un-
less it sees the Light of another Sun. Therefore in one and the

same breath she prays for a happy delivery and for a happy

admission to the holy font of Baptism: “. . . that the fruit of

her womb, by the assistance of Thy merciful hand, come hap-
pily to light and be preserved for the sacred rebirth of

Baptism.”

But do you know what to me always seemed most impressive
about this first blessing which Mother Church bestows on the

expectant mother? It is easily noticeable that already on this

day she is thinking—with a sore heart—of how, according to
an inexorable law, the ways of these two persons, now so in-
timately united, will separate farther and farther; how this



THE FATHER AT BAPTISM 101

child will slowly but steadily tend away from the heart and the

breast, the knees and the home of mother to go its own ways,
only God knows how dark and fearsome. Over all this Mother
Church already today extends her praying hands, petitioning

that at the end child and mother meet again and together enter

the holy, eternal Light. I must give you the conclusion to this

blessing of an expectant mother, grand and simple as it is,

passing unnoticeably from the singular to include both: “Save

them both, almighty God, and grant them Thy everlasting
Light!”

I hope, dear Mrs.
,
that when the time comes for you

to receive these blessings of Mother Church, kneeling with the

child under your heart in the sacristy or later with the same

child in your arms before the altar, your own joy will prove
how your question and my reply were not in vain. That this
joy may be yours (and many other mothers-to-be) is the hearty
wish of

Yours sincerely in Christ,

45 ... THE FATHER AT THE BAPTISM OF HIS CHILD

Thus far I have discussed many questions that are not in
the catechism, and I have tried to give the answers clear and

simple as I thought to be. But to the query, “Why shouldn’t
the father also attend the Baptism of his child?,” I can merely

say: That is what I too would like to know! For I dare not

assume any Catholic father is so poorly instructed as to con-



102 THE SACRAMENTS

sider Baptism unimportant, a kind of “old women’s affair” of

no concern to an honest man. Much less could I assume that
the same person who proudly announced the birth of his child
at the rectory and at shop would all of a sudden feel ashamed

to cross the village street with his baby.

Listen to what the novelist Alban Stolz had to say on the

matter: “In many places the sense and intelligence of some
fathers must have struck a leak. When the child dies and the
dead body, the empty frame of the escaped soul, is carried to

the cemetery, then the father goes along in his best attire. But

when the living child is carried to church to be solemnly re-
ceived and made a child of our Father in heaven, a member of

Jesus Christ, a temple of the Holy Spirit, and a claim to heaven

is accorded it, then behold, everybody remains at home, and

the father . . . well, he sits down and waits till the nurse and
sponsors come back from church, as if the whole affair hardly

concerned him.”

Where such is the case, something must be out of order. For
whatever else happens in the life of the child, whether it makes

its First Holy Communion, gets married or buried, if the

father is not present, everybody will wonder what has hap-

pened. But when the one most important thing in the life of

the child happens, when it is re-born in water and the Holy
Spirit, then the father at times remains home, smoking, watch-

ing television, or perhaps napping.

What a wealth of material for him to think about and to
pray about during the sacred function—for him, the respon-
sible educator of this youngest Christian in the parish, whose

soul will one day be asked of him at the final judgment! All

that is there done and said and prayed for has a special mean-

ing just for him. He could very easily think of his own Bap-
tism; he could think of the day soon to come when his crying

baby, which now understands nothing of all they do for it, will



THE CROSS AT CONFIRMATION 103

open its bright baby eyes and read from his own face the first
important lesson in this living catechism, what a baptized

Christian looks like.

Truly Christian parents will easily sense how unique an
occasion and how important an event a Baptism is in the life
of their family.

46 . . . THE SIGN OF THE CROSS ON THE FOREHEAD
AT CONFIRMATION

At our first meeting with Mother Church, one of the first

things she did was this: by the hand of the priest she made
the Sign of the Cross on our forehead, at the very beginning

of the Baptism ceremony. This was meant to show that she

took possession of us. Just as many establishments carry the
name of the owner over the front door, so are we to carry all
life long the victorious sign of Him who in the sacrament of
Baptism claimed us as His own. To make the Sign of the Cross
meant nothing else to the early Christians than to renew with

one’s own hand this claim of possession; to cross oneself meant
to mark a cross with the thumb on one’s forehead; only later
did it become customary to add a second and a third on the

lips and breast.

What we experienced at Confirmation was basically the
same ceremony, and yet we felt that here it had special rank
and significance. For it was the hand of the bishop that made
the cross, using at the same time the noblest of the three holy

oils, holy chrism. Moreover, what pertained to ceremony at



104 THE SACRAMENTS

Baptism (and in case of necessity could have been omitted) was

here an essential part of the sacrament.

With the new rank came new meaning. To be confirmed
means to be anointed in the power of the Holy Spirit as a full-

fledged citizen of God’s kingdom; from then on he is to share

the responsibility for the fortunes of this kingdom on earth.

Therefore he is to carry, one may say, the “national emblem”
on his forehead. Wherever he goes it should be known that he
professes and stands up for Him who died on the Cross and
overcame death by death. Through Confirmation one dedi-

cates himself as a soldier of Christ to this glorious insignia of

the holy Cross: proudly he bears it on his forehead, ready to

stand up fearlessly for his Leader whether in attack or defense.

Not without reason did I mention attack first. For the

Church is like a country at war: mere defense is not enough.

On her flags is imprinted the order for world conquest, the'
most decisive and yet the most peaceful ever planned by any

power on earth. Do not say that here we have the task of the
clergy. Only a person who for the last decades had isolated
himself in an ivory tower could still talk that way. Again and

again have recent Popes emphasized that every baptized and

confirmed Christian shares in the fortunes of God’s kingdom

upon earth; in the lay apostolate, in Catholic Action laymen

must march shoulder to shoulder with the clergy as servants

and soldiers of Christ on all fronts. A sad army indeed, if only
the officers’ corps had the spirit of attack!

You see, then, that the cross of Confirmation on your brow
means something that enters deeply into your life. It was not

said unwisely that Confirmation is the sacrament of Catholic

Action, the anointing unto the lay apostolate. What are you
doing on your part, confirmed Christian, to help conquer the

world for Him whose emblem was sealed on your forehead?
What interest do you show and how do you help along when



THE PRIEST'S HAND AT ABSOLUTION 105

the missions, home and foreign, are mentioned ? How do you
stand in your parish? Are you just another name on the files,

or one who shares the cares of the pastor ? What steps do you
take when you notice a brother or a sister in Christ growing

cold in faith and love because of the icy winds of our times?

What do you do in your business, in society and politics, in
public life and in education, to uphold respect for God’s Com-

mandments and for the Cross of Jesus Christ?

More than ever before in the Church’s history does the for-

tune of God’s kingdom depend today on the support of the

laity. We must pray earnestly that the Spirit we have received
in Confirmation may make us realize ever more vividly the
high purposes to which Confirmation and the cross on our

foreheads have destined us; to a fearless, aggressive support

of Him who in this sign overcame death and redeemed man-
kind.

47 ... THE RAISING OF THE PRIEST'S HAND BEFORE
ABSOLUTION

Nothing simpler, you say. He wants to make the Sign of the
Cross over the penitent, and for that he must raise his hand.

The explanation sounds plausible, yet it is wrong. If you pay
close attention, you will see that the priest does not raise his

hand at the moment he makes the Sign of the Cross over you,
but already at the beginning of the long formula of absolution.

Hence this lifting of the hand must have some other meaning.

Scholars tell us that the raising of the hand was not intro-



106 THE SACRAMENTS

duced as an elevation of the hand, but is the remnant of an

ancient imposition of hands . As long as confession was made
in the open choir, kneeling down beside the confessor’s chair
(it was done that way through the Middle Ages), the priest

laid his right hand on the head of the penitent at the absolu-

tion. When after the Reformation our modern confessionals
were introduced, with a grill between priest and penitent (St.

Charles Borromeo was mainly responsible for this), the im-

position of hand became impossible—the grill was in the way.
But not to lose sight entirely of the ancient gesture, the raising

of the hand at the absolution was retained.

Good and necessary as is the present arrangement of the
confessional, it is too bad that this wonderful priestly gesture

had to be sacrificed. In it the faithful could see directly what

confession is, what consoling and soothing and healing power

here flows from the Cross of Christ into the sinful heart of

man. Indeed, the gesture of imposing hands tells us still more.

Once Christians spontaneously felt that the priest did not do it

in his own name, but in His Name who, according to the Bible,
“imposed hands on the sick and possessed, and they were

cured.” When the bishop imposes hands on a young deacon in
priestly ordination, we likewise sense that it is only done in
Christ’s Name. Thus the gesture of the imposition of hands at
the absolution expresses the most important thing that can be

said of confession.

To go to confession does not mean to take one’s spiritual ail-
ments to human physicians (with varying degrees of skill and
tact); to go to confession means to come to the Physician of

souls whom the ancients called “Arch-physician”—the One
who knows our heart because He made it. Of this we must be
absolutely convinced every time we enter the confessional. We
should close our eyes to “the human side” of the sacrament
and say quietly to ourselves : I will now contritely kneel down,



ANOINTING THE SICK 107

not before any mortal’s hand (it is wholly inconsequential to

which priest I confess or who gives me absolution), but be-
neath the healing hand of my Redeemer. No matter how much
our heart may be weighed down with anxiety and fear, we

will nonetheless have an experience similar to the Evangelist

John’s when he fell down on his face before God’s majesty

with the feeling of sinful unworthiness: “And he (the Lord

Jesus) laid his right hand upon me, saying: Tear not!”’

(Apoc. 1:17).

48 . . . ANOINTING THE SICK

In spiritual books and periodicals you may have noticed in
recent years a tendency to translate the name “extreme unction”

into more understandable English by calling it “last anointing.”

Some writers, in fact, feel that an even better name for this

sacrament would be “anointing of the sick” or simply “holy

anointing.” Why so? Because an unfortunate misunderstand-
ing has come about and settled in the hearts of Christians, the

false idea, namely, that this sacrament is limited to the moment
when a person is about to breathe “his last.” As a result the
name of the fifth sacrament conjures up a fearsome picture
to many; a great number of the sick and a still greater num-
ber of unreasonable relatives will wait and wait—till often it
is too late—to call the priest for administering this sacrament,
believing that after the anointing death “must” necessarily

follow.

However, things are quite different once you quietly listen



108 THE SACRAMENTS

to what the Church herself says on the topic. Not only is she

the competent minister but also the competent interpreter of

the seven fountains of salvation issuing from the Cross of her

Spouse. The Church does not simply identify this sacrament
as “the sacrament of the dying”; rather, it is the sacrament for

the benefit of those who are seriously ill. In compassion toward
those suffering from a disease that threatens life, Christ insti-

tuted a special sacrament. By a special means of grace He
wants to extend His pardoning, strengthening and consoling

hand to His brothers and sisters who are gravely ill. Not
without reason did He make soothing and invigorating oil
the sign of the sacrament. Yes, according to the express teach-

ing of the Church, not the least purpose of this sacrament is

that Christ by means of it grants to the sick person’s body

mysterious powers of recovery.

God be thanked that now when the prayers surrounding
this sacrament are said in the vernacular, everyone can hear

that there is scarcely a word about death in them, but rather

repeated references to healing and to getting back to work.

Of course, for everyone the hour will one day arrive when
according to God’s will, determined from eternity, the physical

healing power of this sacrament will not be realized. Then
the sacrament for the seriously ill becomes the sacrament of

strength and encouragement for the dying, safely steering the

soul into its eternal harbor.

There would seem, therefore, to be some reason for naming

the sacrament “holy anointing” or “anointing of the sick”

rather than “last anointing.” But even if we use the latter term,

we should not associate it exclusively with the Christian’s “last
hour”; rather, this anointing can rightly be called the “last” by

comparison to the anointings that usually precede it in the life

of a Christian, i.e., those of baptism and confirmation.

In any case, we must do away with unreasonable fears



ANNOUNCING A CANDIDATE TO THE PRIESTHOOD 109

associated with this sacrament. And we must do all in our
power that it be conferred in due time so that it can unfold

its healing power if such be God’s will: for we have no right

to expect God to work an outright miracle. All life long we
should pray that as our dying hour approaches we may in full
consciousness be strengthened with the graces of this consoling

sacrament and with Holy Viaticum, and so be privileged to

pass from this land of exile into our heavenly fatherland.

49 . .

.

ANNOUNCING A CANDIDATE TO THE PRIEST-
HOOD

When grandmother returned from High Mass one Sunday
morning, she was mumbling to herself indignantly on enter-

ing the front door. “Such a thing is a bit too much; it has not

happened before during all my 73 years.” Urged to tell what
really had happened, she grew quite angry. Was she, with her
old deaf ears, the only one in the house who had listened to
what was announced! Didn’t they realize that it meant the

end of all the town’s preparations for their neighbor son’s

First Mass? To think that this young man was going to get
married! Because of her deafness, she had not been able to

catch the name of the girl—but she could state solemnly that
his name was announced from the pulpit, the very seminarian
who in his long black cassock had for several years been
helping the priest around the altar. “One should not think it
possible!” It took a long time to convince grandma that a

candidate for the priesthood must also “be announced” in



no THE SACRAMENTS

church; and finally she wanted to know why such a “new-
fangled custom” was introduced. Here the wisdom of the

household was exhausted.

So we must try to find the answer. Someone might say:
When a person gets married or becomes a priest, that is his
own business and it should concern nobody else. This sounds
all right, - but it is absolutely wrong. Could you imagine

parishioners to whom it would be altogether a matter of in-
difference what kind of families and what kind of priests

their church produced? Canon Law provides that the sacra-
ments of Holy Orders and Matrimony are administered

solemnly and publicly before the assembled people, and that

the names of prospective recipients be announced to the

parish a good time in advance. Everybody in church should

know: someone of the community wants to start a family,

or someone of the parish wants to become a priest. This con-

cerns everybody. Yes, all of us here in the parish—and who
should be better informed—are regularly asked by the Church
concerning those about to get married or preparing for Holy

Orders.

For priests it begins already with the first decisive higher

Order, the subdiaconate; it is repeated again before the dia-

conate and the priesthood. The primary purpose of the an-

nouncement is that if anyone is aware of something weighing

seriously against the reception of Holy Orders (or some im-

pediment to marriage), he would be obliged in conscience to

report it. Yes, even when at the point of ordaining, the bishop

does not begin with the ceremonies without once more address-

ing the assembled faithful and asking if there be any reason

militating against the candidate; because those who travel in a
ship, he says, cannot be indifferent about the man at the helm.
To be sure, it will happen rarely—God be thanked—that

anyone must bring an accusation against an ordinand after the



ANNOUNCING A CANDIDATE TO THE PRIESTHOOD 111

announcement in church or in the cathedral. But the declara-

tion serves a good purpose, even when everything is in proper

order. That one of your parish is to be ordained to the holy

priesthood should certainly affect you in this sense that you

rejoice over the honor coming to your community; that you

feel partly responsible and want to pray along that your

candidate will become a good priest; and that, if possible, you

attend the ceremonies when the bishop amid solemn silence
imposes his consecrating hands upon your deacon. And also
for the others whom you do not know personally, you can
pray; they too will be your priests, helmsmen of the ship in

which you sail; who knows but that one of them one day will
stand at your death-bed endeavoring to conduct you into

heaven’s holy harbor.

In ancient days when dioceses were no bigger than the
episcopal city, such participation on the part of the faithful

came easy. The whole congregation could pray and fast with
their bishop during all of Ember Week for the priestly can-
didates (fortunately the prayers for good priests in Ember
Week have been retained to our day). When the ordination
night between Saturday and Sunday had arrived, all would

be present in the cathedral; and every time a name was called
off, all gave their consent with a joyous shout—as a great peal
their acclamation would resound from the walls: Dignus est!

He is worthy!
When you next assist at an ordination ceremony, I hope

you will experience a faint glimmer of that wonderful scene

of early Christian days. Your heart will expand—and I think
grandmother’s too, in spite of her old, deaf ears—when you
hear the whole assembled church pray as with one voice for

the candidates to the priesthood. There they lie humbly pros-

trate in their long white albs on the floor of the sanctuary

while the whole congregation sings over them the Litany of



112 THE SACRAMENTS

the Saints, calling down upon them the protection of the
saints in heaven, and upon all who in the ship of the Church
are sailing towards the haven of eternity. Omnes sancti Dei

,

intercedite pro nobis! All ye Saints of God, make intercession
for us!

50 . . . THE NUPTIAL MASS AFTER HOLY MARRIAGE

I know there are plenty of weddings with no Nuptial Mass.
Yes, there also are weddings that for good reasons cannot

have a Nuptial Mass, such, for instance, at which one of the

contracting parties unfortunately is a non-Catholic. It must

nevertheless be remembered that these “quiet weddings,”

even when they become frequent and seem “in style,” are
actually only tolerated by the Church. If you inquire how the
Church wants a wedding performed, every priest will un-

hesitatingly give you the answer: together with the Nuptial

Mass. Why has Mother Church introduced this sequence of
marriage and Nuptial Mass, and why is she so concerned
about retaining it?

The answer is not difficult. The bridal couple have now,
after administering the sacrament of Matrimony to each

other, embarked timidly upon a new course. Naturally they
will ask themselves what the first thing is that they should

do in common. And without hesitation their Christian heart
will tell them that they can begin their married life in no

more beautiful and worthy way than with a united offering

of Christ’s holy Sacrifice.



THE NUPTIAL MASS AFTER HOLY MARRIAGE 113

To whom should they have recourse in this great and
anxious hour but to their Lord and Savior who has created
and disposed their hearts for each other and now united them
by the holy seal of the sacrament! With Him alone lies the
answer to the anxious question that fills every serious human
heart in that decisive hour. To Him alone can they address the
words that are sung at the Nuptial Mass Offertory, in which all

human anxiety finds its solution:

In Thee, O Lord, I trust.
Thou art my God:
In Thy hands my days rest secure.

On the threshold of married life the newly-weds want their
Lord and Redeemer to unite them by His holy Sacrifice. All

life long this Sacrifice will be for them the lofty school of

matrimonial and parental love. Here they will have to learn

to dedicate themselves ever more completely and selflessly and

silently with Christ and like Christ to the holy will of the

heavenly Father, in holy service to each other and to the

children God may entrust to them. The strength of self-
surrender, learned and begged for at the altar, they will

have plentiful occasion to exercise.

But the Nuptial Mass would not be truly a Nuptial Mass

without the newly-weds receiving holy Communion together.
For in the most perfect manner possible to Christians, they

should permit themselves to be taken up into Christ’s own
self-surrender; now for the first time as husband and wife, they
approach the holy Table at which the sacrificial Body of

Christ is received as Food. Even before sharing a common
table at home, they share in the heavenly Table of Christ’s

love and suffering. And it should remain that way all their
lives. All of their matrimonial and family life should come

under the law of “the two tables,” with priority given to the



114 THE SACRAMENTS

Lord’s. (How poor the family where every thought and care
is for the one table at home, where everything circles about

earning and eating and spending.) Naturally they will

rejoice over the growing group around the family table at

home; and naturally they will work hard, not that this table

should offer superfluity and luxury, but the necessary items

(and sometimes a little more).

Nevertheless, the happiest hours of family life will ever

be those when they can conduct another child for the first
time to the holy Table of Christ’s love. Blessed indeed will

be the Sunday mornings, when surrounded by the circle of
their children, they kneel down together at the holy Table
where once they began their married life; its festive splendor

they take along to a joyful Sunday breakfast at home—an
inspiration for the joys and sorrows of the ensuing days. And
when father and mother are resting under the sod, the
grown-up children will say to one another: What wonderful
Sundays those were at home when father and mother first
went to holy Communion with us and when we took break-
fast together in holy peace!

Don’t you agree that if all Christian couples would under-

stand this approach and begin their family life with the

Nuptial Mass and continue to live it out, then we would not
need to be concerned about the spirit of joyful living with

the Church and with its liturgy, objectives which these instruc-

tions have attempted to rouse anew. In the bosom of such a

family, children inhale the Christian spirit naturally, like the

air they breathe. In the bosom of such a family they receive

the first and the most important “catechism lessons” of their

lives. No one in the world can teach as impressively and unfor-
gettably what is in the catechism and what is not in the cate-

chism as the heart of a truly Christian mother and the example

of a truly Christian father.



HOW TO make "participation"
INTELLIGENT and SPIRITUALLY FRUITFUL—

GOD’S PEOPLE

ABOUT THE ALTAR
THE VOICE OF THE FAITHFUL

AT THE EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION

by Dr. Balthasar Fischer

Writing to provide special pedagogical helps for

the Munich International Eucharistic Congress in I960,

Dr. Fischer concentrates on those parts of the Mass

liturgy that belong primarily to the people—particularly
the simple responses. Familiarity and repetition have

seemingly made these parts commonplace and shop-
worn; here the profound spiritual doctrine and practical

moral values of the people’s responses and functions

are set forth simply, clearly, convincingly.

$.20