In the Mass we have the “Entry Antiphon” and the “Communion Antiphon”, but the psalms originally used at these points – the Entry being in procession – have dropped out, thus leaving the “answering voice” without the other voice.   Ironically, the Response in the Responsorial Psalm is a true Antiphon, properly used, but we don’t call it one!   Crazy world.

B is for Benediction. “Benediction” is just a long word for blessing, but we think of it particularly in terms of the consecrated host placed on the altar in the display receptacle we call the “monstrance” and with which, after a period of adoration the faithful are blessed.   Older Catholics will remember Benediction from their youthful Sunday afternoons or schooldays, and woe betide anybody who looked away, scratched, sniffed or coughed when the Blessed Lord was on the altar.   Younger Catholics may not have a clue what I am talking about.   It isn’t an ‘ancient’ devotion; it dates back to the 16^th.   The rite has altered slightly but it still has its place in the cycle of devotion.

C is for Chasuble. One of the priest’s Mass vestments (along with the [optional] white neck-cloth or amice, the white alb and the scarf-like stole).   Contrary to rumour (and some practice!) the use of the chasuble is not optional.  Like other vestments, it started life as an ordinary item of wear for a well-to-do Roman male; in this case a sort of overcoat.   In the Western tradition there is a cycle of symbolic colours;  in the Eastern tradition, where the garment is longer and squarer, the colour system is much freer.

A Roman fiddleback chasuble

Traditionally the chasuble was decorated with a Y shape, signifying the yoke of Christ, but sometimes that was dispensed with the leave the field clear for elaborate needlework designs.   The cut-away sleeveless design (‘Roman’) was intended for hot countries, unlike the fuller (‘Gothic’) design, but the use of the former now seems to be taken to suggest that the priest concerned is very antiquarian or ultra-conservative.   Nowadays chasubles can be very simpler, or vehicles for almost any kind of woven ‘trendy’ religious-political statement, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

D is for Deaconess. Is Father being provocative?   “Deacon” means ‘one who serves or provides’, and the Greek word diakonos can be used of male or female.   This service could be of a general kind (e.g. the holy women companions of Jesus who, the Gospels say, “deaconed” for him, i.e. provided for him in various ways) or a specific order of the Church, given by the laying on of hands.   In Romans 16 we read of one Phoebe in Corinth – clearly female – who is described as a diakonos.   The big question is:  was she (and others like her) an ordained deacon, in a ministry later snuffed out by misogynist men, or is the term being used in a looser way?

John Henry Newman

It was to have been at Coventry airport, scene of the last Papal Mass, but now, to the chagrin of the city dignitaries of Coventry and on the grounds of expense, has been moved to Cofton Park in the S.W. suburbs of Birmingham.

This location, which holds 100,000, is directly opposite the now largely razed former BMW/MG Rover site at Longbridge – a monument to the collapse of British industry – though I am assured by one in the know that the park is delightful.   It is also very close to the Oratory Fathers’ cemetery at Rednal, where the grave of Newman and his friend Fr. Ambrose St. John is situated.

It is a pity that a German Pope will not be visiting Coventry, which for obvious reasons would be a powerful sign.   However the change will allow the Pope to visit Newman’s unaltered study in the Oratory House in Birmingham, a private visit as that room certainly does not hold 100,000 people.

It does seem a bit risky only to know the venue for such an event three months in advance, though no doubt all will go swimmingly especially as Chris (Lord) Patten is now in charge, a man who has acquitted himself with distinction not least as our last Governor in Hong Kong.

Although it is difficult to find a place for the Easter bonnet, the Easter egg has a well-established history as a symbol of the Resurrection, though admittedly not in its modern chocolate guise.  The egg’s oval shape, like a seed, echoes Christ’s words:  “Unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it remains a single grain, but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest”.

The Church encouraged the practice, especially common in Slavic lands, of elaborately decorating Easter eggs, even if the religious authorities never foresaw the degree of decoration achieved by the jeweller Fabergé with his Easter eggs of gold, silver and precious gems which the royal families of Europe used to present to each other.

The Easter bunny, too, has a perfectly respectable religious history, at least if we perform a small sleight of hand and for ‘rabbit’ read ‘hare’.  In ancient tradition the hare was the animal which never closed its eyes and which watched over the other animals during the night.   It was thus a symbol of the moon.   Easter is of course a lunar feast, celebrated on the first full moon after the spring equinox.   For early Christians the hare was as much a symbol of the risen Christ as the fish was of the name of Christ.

It is only natural that for a feast based on new life, believers should turn to parallels of new life and pick these up as symbols.  Easter is the springtime of Christ …

At least, so we say.  But what if we live in the southern hemisphere, say in the Christian lands of the far south like Chile and Argentina, where autumn has well and truly arrived?   What can they make of our liturgical stress on the Easter spring, when for them Easter is represented by shortening days, high winds, falling leaves and fog?

For them, Easter hope must take a different form.  It is a hope which has a more distant fulfilment.  Just as in winter a tree seems stark and bare, yet guards all its life within itself to bring it forth again gloriously in the spring, so an autumn Easter speaks of the sunshine of Christ destined to shine only when the reality of dark days has well and truly passed.  We can all surely think of ‘autumn Easters’ in our lives, and we must preserve our hope while we are experiencing them.

Holy Monday and Tuesday are highly significant. On the Monday Jesus entered the Temple and drove out the traders. This was Jesus’ way of symbolising the coming of a completely new order. The arthritic Temple sacrifice system (which was the context of the buying, selling and money-changing) was about to collapse. It is the equivalent of the tearing of the separation-curtain in the Temple at the death of Jesus, recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke. God and humans are no longer apart. Christ has brought them together. Holy Monday is our ‘Unification Day’.

Holy Tuesday is the day of some of Jesus’ most radical teaching. He will not tell his opponents the source of his teaching authority, for he realises they are unable to recognise real authority (rather than their own). According to John’s Gospel, Jesus had already said: “Before ever Abraham was, I AM” (a clear statement of his divinity). On the Tuesday, a fig tree which he cursed for not bearing figs out of season (!) withers away. This seemingly spiteful incident is a way of showing that Jesus does not follow expectations. He is not a tree; his results come at unexpected times and in unexpected ways. Also on the Tuesday he seems to commend a widow for putting all her savings in the Temple treasury, but in fact he is primarily condemning a heartless system which callously ‘swallowed the property of widows’. Religion must bear fruit in love, in season or out of season. Holy Tuesday is ‘Fruitfulness Day’.

It is true that the Mass Gospels on these days focus on other things – on Monday, the anointing of Jesus’ feet in the evening meal with Martha, Mary and Lazarus at Bethany.

However, we can see from these significant days how Judas Iscariot, who had presumed that Jesus would fulfil certain pre-conceptions about him, found a different – and for him disappointing and dangerous – Jesus. Preferring certainties to provocation, Judas decided in his exasperation to help rid the world of the Christ. Thus the story can proceed as we know it…

We now come to those days which contain the heart of the ‘Paschal Mystery’. In many other languages, the word for the festival we call ‘Easter’ comes from the word for ‘Passover’ (or in Slavic languages ‘Great Night’, referring to the climax of the Passover event). Unfortunately our word ‘Easter’ comes from Anglo-Saxon ‘eostre’, the name of a pagan goddess, which doesn’t help at all, and gives no idea of ‘passing over’.

For Christians, the Jewish feast of Passover, celebrating the Jews’ liberation from Egypt in a ritual meal centred on the lamb, has been transformed into the celebration of Christ, the Lamb of God, who offered himself, dying and being raised to life, to liberate us from the effects of sin – the frustration of incompleteness, of ‘non-being’ – and lead us not to a geographical but to a spiritual Promised Land.

At the heart of the ‘Mystery’ is the three-day period known as the Holy Triduum, This forms one religious action separated into three days:-

• Holy Thursday Christ invites his disciples to his Passover Last Supper, teaches them the new commandment of his love, serves them by washing their feet, and lays the ground for the Holy Eucharist, which will be ratified by his death and resurrection; he then prays at Gethsemane on the eve of his Passion.
• Good Friday Christ freely surrenders himself in death in his love for the world.
• Holy Saturday Christ lies in the tomb but is raised by the Holy Spirit from his Father. Death cannot defeat the totality of his loving obedience. The EASTER VIGIL, the crux of the whole Christian year, brings Christ’s renewal home to us through the elements: light and water. This is the fulfilment of all the prophecies.

It seems like only yesterday that we were celebrating the feast of the Epiphany and the revealing of Christ to the wise men from the east. They followed the star and it brought them to kneel before the infant Christ to whom they offered their exotic gifts. But, unknown to them, at that time they were being gifted by the Lord in a way far richer than anything that they had been able to offer him.

St Matthew sums it up when he writes at the end of the story that they returned to their own country by a different way. That phrase means much more to me than just something about geography or map reading or the fear of Herod. It says something profoundly spiritual about conversion and the journey of faith, and it’s entirely appropriate for us to revisit it today, as we stand on the threshold of Lent.

We too have followed a star; we too have journeyed in faith to bring our gifts – not least the gift of ourselves – to the Lord. In return, he has gifted us with so much and he has called us to be stewards of those gifts. As we recognise this, our lives, like those of the wise men, will begin to take a different direction. Our journey of faith continues, but in a different way.

The season of Lent marks yet again an opportunity for that change of direction, for conversion and for the deepening of our faith. It is a time for generous giving and for a renewed trust in the goodness and love of the Lord who calls us to be his disciples.

The context of today’s Gospel is Luke’s account of the call of the first disciples. Last Sunday, we heard Jesus inviting Peter to put out into the deep with total trust in him, so that he could become a “fisher of men”. In the passage from Luke that immediately precedes today’s passage, we read of Jesus spending the night in prayer before he chooses those who were to be his special companions. Today’s Gospel tells of Jesus coming down from the mountain and introducing his newly chosen apostles to a sea of humanity into which they, as “fishers of men”, must enter without fear, casting their nets for a catch and becoming, in their turn, the star that will lead men and women to Jesus.

This is the beginning of the Church which we know and love and within which we find the Lord. This is the Church in which, through baptism, we begin to share in the work and the loving of Christ. This is the world of the poor, the needy,
those who are troubled and distressed, and Jesus calls us to be his presence among all people, to bring joy, satisfaction and comfort – but, not without cost.

When the new disciples heard Jesus’ words, they must have wondered, as perhaps we do ourselves, “how can this be?” The answer to that question lies in the angel’s words to Mary at the start of Luke’s Gospel: “the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” These things will come about because the power of God’s Spirit is poured out on the disciples. Through the Spirit, they will discover the courage, the wisdom and the understanding to proclaim and live the Gospel. We, today’s disciples, like those first followers, are called to witness to the truth that real joy and happiness and fulfilment come because we trust in the Lord, rather than in those aspects of modern living which are so neglectful of God and seemingly so transient. This understanding of the call to discipleship, and our response to it, has been central to all my recent teaching and forms the lynchpin of our Pastoral Plan.

We come today to the threshold of Lent; it’s another opportunity to continue and deepen our journey in faith, bringing us to the Lord in new and exciting ways.

For some – I am thinking particularly of our catechumens seeking baptism and of those seeking to come into full communion with the Church – their journey is quite specific and has a very sharp focus. Easter for them will be a wonderful culmination and fulfilment of deepest hopes. It will bring joy to them and to all us who have journeyed with them.

For those of us who have been longer on the journey, Lent is a time of renewal and ongoing conversion with a greater and more generous concentration on the gifts the Lord has given us. Whatever Lenten penance we undertake, it should aim at making us more aware of the extraordinary love and care the Lord has for us.

For all of us, wherever we are in our journey of faith, Lent is a time for renewed prayer and for giving more time and space to God and to all those who, together with us, make up the human family, the brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s time to seek again the face of Christ. There we will find the compassion and healing love that renews our spirits. Look on that face in the silence of your prayer and give thanks to the Lord who has such love for us. Coming to the heart and
face of Christ, we discover anew what it means to be truly one of his disciples, sent out to proclaim and be the Good News of the Kingdom.

May God bless you all,
Crispian

A Roman fiddleback chasuble

From the 13^th century, the list of liturgical vestments was more or less complete, and what followed was a more detailed regulation of their use, a tendency to resort to ever greater degrees of decoration, and a growing preference for shorter vestments, so that instead of the fairly voluminous ‘Gothic’ chasuble we arrive at the Roman style – or ‘fiddleback’ after its distinctive cut-away shape, reminiscent of the shape of a violin.

The backs of some Roman vestments – which would be seen by the congregation, as the priest stood facing East – became ornamental works of art in themselves, objects for meditation like stained glass windows in embroidery.   An exception to this shortening was the bishop’s mitre, which tended to become taller and taller.

There has been a tendency which began in the 1920’s to reverse all these processes, favouring fuller Gothic vestments in which much of the ‘decoration’ is provided by the folds alone (as in the most ancient vestments).    This has been accompanied latterly by the development of the fitted white alb, which has tended to make redundant the use of the amice round the neck, and the cincture round the waist.   The use of this alb has also smudged the former distinction between Mass and non-Mass garments, for the alb used to be reserved for Mass, leaving the cassock and surplice/cotta – so called “choir dress” – for other services.

The late medieval period saw a growing understanding of the symbolic significance of vestments, taking as its cue the list of “spiritual armour” given by St. Paul in Ephesians 6:14-17:  “belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, sword of the Spirit” etc.    This symbolism is preserved in the prayers at putting on the vestments, prayers which still – at least theoretically – remain in use:  the amice “the helmet of salvation”, the alb “wash me white, O Lord”, the cincture “the girdle of purity”, the stole “of immortality”, the chasuble “my yoke is easy and my burden light”.      In the Eastern Church, the priest, as we shall see, still wears a “sword” – sort of.

We can understand much of this more clearly if we look at what the Reformers gave up.   Firstly, the development of vestments was generally – and wrongly – seen by the Reformers to derive from the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which they rejected.    So Calvinists, who totally rejected the Mass, abandoned all vestments in favour of a civil gown.  Lutherans rejected the cincture (symbol of chastity) because they rejected clerical celibacy, likewise the stole and maniple, signs of the ‘higher orders’, but at least initially they were happy to retain the remainder.

In England the 1549 Anglican Prayer Book left vestments largely untouched;  it was only  the growing Calvinist influence (1552 Book) which saw their abolition, and their attempted reintroduction was a cause of major controversy before the Civil War (1642) and in the 19^th. century

When aged 30 he was ordained a priest, but some ten years later he threw up the prospect of a peaceful life teaching and preaching in this country in order to be a missionary.    He first followed his fellow Englishman, the Yorkshireman St. Willibrord, to Frisia, the bleak coastal region between Amsterdam and Hamburg, but the mission there was unsustainable, and he returned to Nursling where he was elected Abbot but refused to accept.     In 718 Pope Gregory II gave him a definite mission further south in Germany, in the land of Hesse, around Frankfurt, and further east in Thuringia.     He was consecrated bishop in 722.

During this mission there occurred the famous episode when he cut down the pagans’ Oak Tree of Thor at Geismar near Kassel;  the failure of Thor, god of Thunder, to intervene caused large numbers to turn to Christ.     [Allegedly this is the origin of the Christmas tree].   Boniface made much use of monastic foundations to spread the faith and was made an archbishop in 732, technically at Mainz on the Rhine, though in fact he remained a travelling missionary.   He also appealed to the English to help the conversion of “those who are of one blood and bone with you”.

Boniface laboured hard to educate half-converted Christians who were hampering rather than helping the mission, was responsible for healthy Church reform, particularly in France, and ensured that the Rule of St. Benedict, which proved such an anchor of stability in the hard times of the Dark Ages, was the principle of monastic life.     At Soissons in France in 751 he crowned Pepin “King of all the Franks”, the precursor of the great Holy Roman Empire which came into being with Pepin’s son Charlemagne in the year 800.

At the age of nearly 80 he left his diocese in Mainz in the hands of another, and set off back north to Frisia to end his days as a simple missioner in the region where he had first begun.     It was here in 754 at Dokkum, near the North Sea coast in what is now part of the Netherlands, that he was attacked by a band of pagans as he waited to confirm a group of new converts, and was killed along with his companions.   The saint tried to defend himself from a blow to the head with a holy book, allegedly “The Advantage of Death” by St. Ambrose.

His body was taken to Utrecht, then to Mainz, and is now enshrined in the Cathedral at Fulda, N.E. of Frankfurt, which was the site of one of his most prosperous monasteries;   he is the patron of the German and Dutch people.    It has been said that “he had a deeper influence on the history of Europe than any other Englishman”, principally by virtue of his initiating the relationship between the Papacy and the Emperor, on whom the progress and consolidation of medieval Europe chiefly depended.

The deacon wore the dalmatic, a square garment with short sleeves (named after Dalmatia – of 101 dogs’ fame – where the style developed), except during penitential seasons when, curiously, he wore a specially folded version of the priest’s chasuble.

The sub-deacon (for there were such in the Roman Rite until 1972) wore a tunicle, very similar to a dalmatic but with different banding.

The priest and bishop wore the chasuble, also, on the left arm, the maniple (now abolished), a hanging band of cloth whose exact significance was a mystery:  some said it represented the towel of Christ washing feet at the Last Supper, others that it was simply a stylised handkerchief (not actually to be used as such, I hasten to add), in lieu of the real handkerchiefs which clergy now push up their shirt sleeves in case their albs have no pockets.

It was also standardised that the chasuble was a garment for Mass only.   For solemn celebrations outside Mass, the ancient, long, cape (cope) was used.

It is strange to realise that for a long time the humble acolyte (whose role was almost universally usurped by the lay altar server) actually wore the same vestments as the priest.   It may also be strange to know that the bishop, to show the fullness of his orders, wore underneath his chasuble both the deacon’s dalmatic and the sub-deacon’s tunicle.   [Even now he may still wear the dalmatic underneath, though few do, and equipped as he was with all the other episcopal paraphernalia he was padded out as if for American football].

As bishops became increasingly important in civil life during this period, so their garments multiplied.   Apart from the garments they shared with the priest, they had:  the dalmatic, the tunicle, the sandals, the gloves, the gloves, the stockings – or ‘buskins’, the pallium (now reserved to Archbishops) and, of course, the mitre on the head.    Thus popular prayer cards which show ancient saints like St. Patrick decked out in all these regalia are anachronistic.   There were complex rules for the donning and discarding of these during certain services, which is how one priest (since laicised) who served at Westminster Cathedral described his time there as “dressing and undressing the Cardinal to music”.

For the first three centuries of Christianity, until when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, there was no such thing as clerical dress.    To celebrate the Eucharist, normal dress was worn, albeit one’s best dress – rather as people did, and in some cases still do, wear ‘Sunday best’ to church.     At this time, fashion dictated that dress was worn long:  a tunic or toga which reached to the ankles, and an outer cloak or cape, cappa, likewise.

Towards the end of this first period, there is evidence that clergy were beginning to wear something distinctive for the Eucharist.   We are only talking about the deacon and the bishop at this stage;  as we have seen, the idea of the ‘priest’ was still in an embryonic stage.   In both cases, the distinctive object was worn round the neck:  for the deacon, the stole (a kind of scarf), for the bishop the pallium – which is still used today, made of wool, but given only to archbishops.    These practices derived in the East and spread to the West;  the Eastern names for the main vestments are different, but essentially the vestments are the same (this will be covered later).

The second period dates from the 6^th to the 9^th century.    This is the most important time for the development of separate liturgical dress.    In part this resulted from a refusal to go with secular fashion, which moved from a preference for long to a preference for shorter dress.    The Church stayed with the older style.   So we have, in essence, the alb (the long white ‘tunic’ reaching the ankles), the stole round the neck, and the chasuble, the outer, coloured ‘cloak’.    The chasuble, it is true, no longer reaches to the ankles, but there is still the cope, or long cloak, secured at the centre by a clasp, which is used for solemn occasions outside Mass, and is a throwback to the earliest times.

Evidence shows that all these vestments were of simple design without great adornment.   This is because they were voluminous in nature and so, when worn, hung with many folds.   The folds were enough to supply the contrast;  any other patterning would have been lost in the folds.

The third stage of development lasts from the 9^th. to the 13^th. century.   It sees the elaboration of the full range of vestments, the understanding, either by custom or reinforced by church law, of ‘who wears what’, and the formulation of a symbolic meaning for each vestment.   This period also saw the expansion of the actual degrees of ministry, including not only bishop, priest and deacon, but sub-deacon and the ‘minor orders’ such as lector and acolyte etc. [these all set aside in the West in 1972].    To this period we will turn in the second part.