As I astutely wrote recently, the modern Penitential Act of the Mass is a strange truncation of what is the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar in the Ancient Mass. The first two options help to maintain the proper place of the Kyrie, which is after the liturgical absolution. It is the third option that itself has many choices that places the Kyrie before the liturgical absolution. Unfortunately, this third option with many options has a trope followed by Lord have mercy; a second trope followed by Christ have mercy; and a third trope followed by Lord have mercy and then the absolution.
The stand alone Kyrie after the liturgical absolution clearly tells the truth about the Kyrie: IT ISN’T A PENITENTIAL ACT BUT AND ACT OF PRAISE FOR GOD’S MERCY.
Palm Sunday and any Mass that omits the Penitential Act also omits the Kyrie because whoever designed the new Missal did not understand that the Kyrie isn’t penitential. It’s an act of praise. For example if the Rite of Blessing and Sprinkling Holy Water is used, the free standing Kyrie is omitted.
However, although the Sprinkling of Holy Water Rite has a slightly different liturgical absolution, there is no reason why the free-standing Kyrie can’t be chanted following that absolution. It should not be omitted!
And what about Palm Sunday? No matter the option of what kind out palm procession there is, once the palms are blessed and the priest arrives at the altar during the Entrance Chant, once the hym is concluded the priest launches directly into the Collect of the Day.
What should have been done, in keeping with a long, long tradition, maybe 1,600 years, the Kyrie would still have been chanted prior to the Collect of the Day.
The Palm Sunday Masses I celebrate this Palm Sunday will have the free standing Kyrie chanted in Greek prior to the Palm Sunday Collect.
Am I the only one who does this correctly in contradiction of the incorrect omission of it in the Modern Missal?
5 comments:
Even with keeping the new Mass, it is time to admit that changes were made in haste and that it time to make such adjustments. One example has been the restoration of the Prayers over the People during the ferias of Lent. Let's stop treating the new Mass as if it were some sort of divine revelation exempt from criticism and change.
Anthony - I would say the same about the "T"LM. It's time to stop treating it like it was some sort of divine revelation and recognize that much of what passed for "Traditional" was cultural baggage and needed to be jettisoned.
It's too bad jettisoning our cultural baggage (aka, trashing our patrimony, but tomato to-mah-to) also meant fabricating tales of even older "traditions" that were "restored" (translation: invented out of thin air to satisfy the pet theories of academics).
Nick
Fr. Kavanaugh,
Tradition is not cultural baggage. It is the handing on of what has been proven good. Tradition connects us to the ancient roots of our faith. Could the old Mass be pruned? Yes, of course. Tradition is not a fossil. Most of what Vatican II called for was accomplished with the reform of 1965. The new Mass, however, has gone beyond the modest reform called for by the council. Even so, it could be serviceable if the options for a traditional form of it were accepted. The de facto form of the new Mass, however, has suppressed these. It is time for both camps to jettison their absolutist views and enter into a real dialogue with each other. The first step in this is those with responsibility over the liturgy to stop insisting on going beyond what the new missal actually requires. This would give space to those who wish a more traditional form of the worship to be comfortable with the new Mass. This is the route towards liturgical peace.
Cardinal Grech is crowing about synodality allowing the Church to have "unity in our differences." A load of crap, if you ask me, that means he wants to see the Church in Europe and North America act a whole lot like Anglicans and Methodists (i.e., collapse even further while chasing every cultural trend in a desperate endeavor to "stay relevant") while still having a veneer of Catholicism such that the Church in Africa and Asia will be hoodwinked.
Note, though, what unity in our differences does not mean--it does not mean that those who attend the TLM are acceptably different. It does not mean that we will be allowed to worship as our ancestors did, in continuity with the "democracy of the dead." The accusations of rigidity, backwardism, and Satanism from the bowels of hell (yes, Mike Lewis tweeted that) will continue. Our traditions must be jettisoned--after all, we know so much better now, and casting off the deadweight of tradition will surely lead to re-vitalization of the Church.
You see, those who will go to Mass come hell or high water, and donate at higher numbers, and contribute more vocations to the Church than the gray hairs who had the perfect 1.8 children ever did--they're the problem, not modernist clerics who wouldn't know a truth claim if it hit them in the nose.
/rant
Nick
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