Traditional Propers for
Septuagesima Sunday
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Vestments: Violet
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INTROIT
Psalm 17: 5, 6, 7
The sorrows of death
surrounded me, the sorrows of hell encompassed me; and in my affliction
I called upon the Lord, and He heard my voice from His holy temple. --
(Ps.17. 2, 3). I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength: the Lord is my
firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. V.: Glory be to the Father, and
to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now,
and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
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COLLECT
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Graciously hear, we beseech Thee,
O Lord, the prayers of Thy people, that we, who are justly afflicted for
our sins, may for the glory of Thy Name, be mercifully delivered.
Through our Lord . . .
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EPISTLE
1 Corinthians 9: 24-27; 10: 1-5
Brethren, Know you not that
they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one receiveth the prize?
So run that you may obtain. And every one that striveth for the mastery
refraineth himself from all things; and they indeed that they may
receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible one. I therefore so
run, not as at an uncertainty; I so fight, not as one beating the air:
but I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps when
I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway. For I
would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under
the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all in Moses were
baptized, in the cloud and in the sea: and did all eat the same
spiritual food, and drank the same spiritual drink: (that they drank of
the spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.) But
with most of them God was not well pleased.
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GRADUAL
Psalm 9, 10, 11, 19, 20
A Helper
in due time in tribulation: let them trust in Thee who know Thee: for
Thou hast not forsaken them that seek Thee, O Lord. V.: For the poor man
shall not be forgotten to the end: the patience of the poor shall not
perish for ever: arise, O Lord, let not man prevail.
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TRACT
Psalm 129: 1-4
Out of the depths I have
cried to Thee, O Lord: Let Thine ears be attentive to the prayer of Thy
servant. V.: If Thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities: Lord, who shall
stand it? V.: For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness, and by reason
of Thy law I have waited for Thee, O Lord.
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GOSPEL
Matthew 20: 1-16
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At that time
Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: The kingdom of God is like to
a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers in his
vineyard. And having agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent
them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour, he saw
others standing in the market place idle, and he said to them: Go you
also into my vineyard, and I will give you what shall be just. And they
went their way. And again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour:
and did in like manner. But about the eleventh hour he went out and
found others standing, and he saith to them: Why stand you here all the
day idle? The say to him: Because no man hath hired us. He saith to
them: Go you also into my vineyard. And when evening was come, the lord
of the vineyard saith to his steward: Call the laborers and pay them
their hire, beginning from the last even to the first. When therefore
they were come that came about the eleventh hour, they received every
man a penny. But when the first also came, they thought that they should
receive more: and they also received every man a penny. And receiving it
they murmured against the master of the house, saying: These last have
worked but one hour, and thou hast made them equal to us that have borne
the burden of the day and the heats. But he answering said to one of
them: Friend, I do thee no wrong; didst thou not agree with me for a
penny? Take what is thine and go thy way: I will also give to this last
even as to thee. Or, is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Is thine
eye evil, because I am good? So shall the last be first, and the first
last. For many are called, but few chosen.
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OFFERTORY
Psalm 91: 2
It is
good to give praise to the Lord, and to sing to Thy Name, O Most High.
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SECRET
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Receive our offerings and prayers,
we beseech Thee, O Lord, and both cleanse us by these heavenly
mysteries, and graciously hear us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy
Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost,
God, world without end. Amen.
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PREFACE
(Preface of the Most Holy Trinity) - It it truly meet and just, right
and for our salvation, that we should at all times, and in all places,
give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God;
Who, together with Thine only-begotten Son, and the Holy Ghost, art one
God, one Lord: not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity
of one substance. For what we believe by Thy revelation of Thy glory,
the same do we believe of Thy Son, the same of the Holy Ghost, without
difference or separation. So that in confessing the true and everlasting
Godhead, distinction in persons, unity in essence, and equality in
majesty may be adored. Which the Angels and Archangels, the Cherubim
also and Seraphim do praise: who cease not daily to cry out, with one
voice saying:
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COMMUNION
Psalms 30: 7, 18
Make Thy
face to shine upon Thy servant, and save me in Thy mercy: let me not be
confounded, O Lord, for I have called upon Thee.
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POST COMMUNION -
May Thy
faithful people, O God, be strengthened by Thy gifts; that in receiving
them, they may seek after them the more, and in seeking them, may
receive them for ever. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who
liveth and reigneth with Thee. . .
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24 comments:
A common explanation of septua/sexi/quinqua-gesima terminology:
--Septuagesima Sunday, likely so-called because — as the 63rd day before Easter — it falls in the 7th (septimus) decade or 10-day period before Easter;
--Sexagesima Sunday, which is the 56th day before Easter and falls in the 6th (sextus) decade before Easter; and
--Quinquagesima Sunday, which is the 49th day before Easter and falls in the 5th (quintus) decade of days before Easter.
In the photograph the celebrant and one of the four servers (three too many) are holding microphones. When the priest ascends to the altar, assuming he doesn't trip over the trailing wire, what does he do with the mike? Does he continue to hold it for all the audible parts of the Mass? Which hand does he hold it in for the Dominus vobiscum?
Keep amplification for the Novus Ordo where it belongs. (Yes, I know that Pius XII had a couple on the papal altar, disguised as reliquaries.)
So, in the Extraordinary Form, you are pretending it is Lent when it is not.
Well, there's a good reason to restore the old calendar!
"So, in the Extraordinary Form, you are pretending it is Lent when it is not."
It's sometimes called pre-Lent--a season of preparation for Lent, a time when we make the transition from the joy of the Christmas season to the penitence of Lent.
John - Microphones can be pesky and stories about them are numerous. I'll add one more.
In Spain last October, I visited the cathedral in Madrid. As we wandered around in the apse, I looked through the screen only to see the very lengthy microphone cords looped together and hanging from the volutes of the columns that are part of the altar decorations.
These coils were out of sight of anyone in the nave, but I thought, "Oh No!" Not even here!
Preparing for Lent is of very ancient origin. There is a need to prepare both physically and spiritually for the great fast.
In the West, Lent formerly required actual fasting, so there was a period of three weeks to prepare for that fast with lighter fasting.
I'm not sure the average Catholic layman can benefit from the broader calendar of the EF. For this reason, the simplified calendar seems the better choice for them. For other Catholics, these weeks of preparation can provide for a fuller, more conscious and more active participation in the Lenten rites.
John Nolan,
I suspect the photograph is from the late Sixties.
The Anglicans also have two calendars; one based on the Book of Common Prayer and the other on the new Common Worship. The former has Septuagesima (the Collect, Epistle and Gospel being identical to those in the classic Roman Rite). The latter has 'Ordinary Time' and a three-year, three-reading Lectionary.
Restoring the season of Septuagesima would require more than wearing violet vestments and omitting the Gloria; it would require a rearranging of both the OF Lectionary and the chants (the Introit 'Circumdederunt me', for example has been moved to the Saturday before Lent 5, formerly Passion Sunday). And I haven't even mentioned the Office for the season.
The Ordinariate calendar might retain the names Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima for the three Sundays before Ash Wednesday, but it doesn't mean much since they are stuck with the OF Lectionary which as we all know is still in 'Ordinary Time'.
I shall be attending the EF for the next three Sundays otherwise I shall be compelled to change seasons. Remember that bit in Sacrosanctum Concilium about 'no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them'? It wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
Microphones are helpful during the sermon, and do not seem to detract too much from the pulpit. Other than that, there's little need for them at Mass, except as an aid to the hearing impaired.
Hahaha, Father Allan, don't complain to the Holy Father about changing Ordinary Time into Septuagesima. If you do, Father Kavanaugh might insinuate that you are calling into question the soundness of the reform of the calendar which you should never do because the current calendar is now the legal and the "righteous" one...
And by the way, that is the whole point why we can have blogs like this, which while remaining loyal and respectful of the Holy Father, nevertheless can raise valid questions about the soundness of many things which the Magisterium of the Popes of recent history have allowed into the Church, and not a few of them with questionable and even disastrous effects.
It also means to say that we are not Papolatrists... We are not Pope worshippers. Though we believe in Papal infallibility, we will not take it sitting down as if we don't have the gift of knowledge and understanding when something is so contrary to Scripture and/or Tradition albeit respecting still the person of the Holy Father.
And that belief in the exalted dignity of the Petrine office doesn't mean we have to believe and hunker down in obeisance to every footstep or every movement of the Pope's lips.
That is why we can raise questions about communion on the hand, about altar girls, about the Mass, about the calendar, about the wholesale abolition of sacred things although some people say 99.9% of people in the pews don't care about these things.
And I am wondering too why a lot of modernists nowadays have all of a sudden become triumphalistic montanists.
By the way, if you think the Pauline/Bugnini Missal is a dog's breakfast, just take a look at Common Worship - the options are bewildering.
Cranmer was an out-and-out heretic but he realized that people ordered their lives on the liturgical calendar, and so did not interfere with it too much. 20th century liturgists, in their comfortable academic environments did not perceive any connection between quotidian concerns and the liturgy which they saw as being essentially didactic.
The result is the Novus Ordo in the Catholic Church and its equivalent in the Anglican community. The NO is not inane; some of the results of liturgical research in the 20th century have born fruit in it. But I would submit that its basic premise is flawed. It was imposed on a largely bewildered laity by a clerical cabal with the pope (Paul VI) at its head; nothing remotely like it had ever happened before; and the damaging effects are still with us.
If there is a disjunct in the calendar it is entirely the fault of those who disrupted it for reasons of their own. Yet there are devotees of the New Order who (absurdly) blame the Old for the dichotomy.
The larger problem is the substitution of the ecclesial and communal experience of Lent, with its attendant fasting, for the current pietistic practice of "giving up something for Lent."
If you returned to the ancient custom of actually fasting during Lent, the resulting calendar issues would almost necessarily be resolved since you would once again need preparatory weeks prior to Lent.
Until you the fix the praxis, skewed as it is by the erroneous pietistic theology underpinning your current Lenten practice, any return to an older calendar is merely an aesthetic change with no real import.
John Nolan,
Thank you for your learned insights.
I once met Archbishop Runcie in Dallas, and was very impressed by him. I naïvely hoped he and JPII would find a way towards reconciliation.
The importance of Anglicanism in the USA is hard to gauge, with Anglican clergy having largely opposed American independence, and the "Episcopal Church" having quickly become only a very minor force in American religious life (apart from the New England elite).
At any rate, outside of a few Commonwealth nations in Africa, it's hard to discern any effective practices within and specific to Anglicanism, liturgical or otherwise, which we should copy. Therefore, it seems best for us to refer to our own liturgical and evangelical traditions as we seek reform.
When I was a kid, I had a sore throat the day the CCD teacher marched us into the Church to have the priest do the St. Blaise Day throat blessing, and my sore throat went away when the candles touched my throat. True story.
Anonymous,
It could be that you were highly susceptible to suggestion. The blessing on Saint Blaise Day merely commemorates a saint who was preserved from starvation by eating candles while in captivity, and who interceded with God to heal the sick. The blessing with the two candles is not a magical cure.
Father McDonald,
Where's your daily post? Each morning, between the Office and Mass, I read your new post whilst listening to NPR. It's become an essential part of my daily ritual!
Whenever I have been to an Episcopal Church, mainly for baptisms and confirmations, I've usually seen the "old" calendar in use, such as the ABC Sunday after Epiphany and XYZ Sunday after Pentecost. "Ordinary time" sounds too bland and secular. I suppose the (Eastern) Orthodox have a different calendar as their liturgical year begins in September.
The Orthodox calendar is different in some ways and similar in others. The same scheme is there, but there are more fasting periods, Easter is calculated using the conciliar scheme, feasts are not "transferred" and saints are celebrated on the date of their falling asleep (unlike in the Roman Church, where dates are sometimes moved, there is no problem in the Orthodox Church with commemorating multiple saints and events on the same day even if it's Sunday). Obviously some of the saints are different and some are the same.
Also, Great Lent is longer and is preceded by three weeks of preparation.
JBS: "The blessing on Saint Blaise Day merely commemorates a saint who was preserved from starvation by eating candles while in captivity..."
What? I thought it was because he cured a child who was choking on a fish bone. Hence the blessing of the throat...
Get a life y'all....
Bee, I heard the same thing. In fact, that is what I told a man who visited St Joseph's for the EF on Sunday. He's not Catholic and asked me to explain what was going on.
Anon @ 6:57, We are hoping to gain eternal life, and I am praying that you will find the same.
Bee,
There are varied accounts of the saint's life, struggles and healings, but the point of the blessing on his feast day is to commemorate the saint himself, not to commemorate a specific event in his life or to prompt a particular cure.
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