“They took up stones to cast at Him, but Jesus hid himself and went outside of the temple.”
I have noticed in some of our diocesan churches that the statues were veiled at the beginning of lent. Is that kosher? No!
Although we have a peculiar Roman Calendar revised/reformed after Vatican II, Passiontide is still Passiontide even though it isn’t called that in the Ordo or the Missal. But….the Roman Missal maintains in the rubrics that statues may be veiled for the 5th Sunday of Lent. And the prefaces for the daily Masses shifts from the Lenten Prefaces to the Prefaces of the Passion of the Lord.
And the reason for Passiontide’s covering of the statues is erased by the modern lectionary, which for some inexplicable reason, expunged the proper Gospel for this day, a quote from it that I have at the beginning of this post above!
Thus, the last two weeks of Lent remain Passiontide, although the word isn’t used, and of course the last week of Passiontide is Holy Week, thanks be to God, a term still used.
Thus it is wrong and against the rubrics of the reformed Roman Missal to cover the statues at the beginning of Lent but perfectly acceptable and encouraged by the same missal to do so during Passiontide, beginning with the 5th Sunday of Lent, aka, Passion Sunday!
1 comment:
That is the tradition which should be respected. To cover statues for the whole of the Great Fast is contrary to traditional practice as you mentioned. To me, it's misplaced energy and an attempt to achieve I'm not sure what, similar to "fasting" from candles, incense, holy water and littering the church with dead things like branches with purple bows.
My Grandmother's parish took veiling a step further by erecting a massive curtain before the high altar on Good Friday after the Presanctified Liturgy. In the old books, and as a para-liturgical Resurrection, the curtain would dramatically fall when the priest intoned (not in English), "Jesus Christ has Risen from the Dead" beginning a grand procession from the now empty tomb, around the interior of the Church (outdoors in Europe) back to the high altar beginning the Easter Vigil afterward. In the new books, the curtain falls at the "Glory to God in the Highest" with the bells ringing and the Resurrection Procession has been moved to after the final blessing as para-liturgical with plenty of bell ringing (the tower bell is a beast and can be heard for a distance). As a kid, if you weren't in this roughly 1K seat church an hour early, you didn't get a place to sit!
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