17 March 2016
Our Lady of Sorrows
Perhaps this is the time to recall the devotion of the Via Matris; seven stations of the seven sorrows, dolours, of our Lady. These are not hard to find on the Internet; if you want traditional language devotions, you will find them at http://www.liturgies.net/saints/mary/viamatris/viamatris.htm
Our Lady of Sorrows has a feast very appropriately situated on the old Octave Day of our Lady's Birthday, September 15, which by a Providential neatness is the very day after Holy Cross Day (how can anybody doubt that Providence is a Catholic Liturgist?). The old Roman Rite and the Ordinariate Missal also had a commemoration on the Friday after Passion Sunday, i.e. the Friday last before Good Friday. Missale Parisiense - does anybody recall a post I did about this, not very long ago? - gave the text (and I invited readers to contribute translations; which they did) of the collect for that day. In fact, the collect concerned appears in Servite texts of the Via Matris. Does that mean that, rather than being composed by one of Archbishop de Harlay's 'Gallican' and semi-Jansenist young men, it is an older Servite formula? Or did the Servites get it from the Paris Missal? And I see it in my old pre-Conciliar Walsingham Pilgrim's Manual, to be said in the Chapel of our Lady of Sorrows, the fourth of the Stations of the Cross, in the Shrine grounds. I wonder how precisely Fr Hope Patten came by it. Or probably, since HP was not much of a latinist, it was Fr Fynes-Clinton.
Of course, the Passion Friday commemoration went for a Burton in the Bugnini deformation of the Roman Rite. But, fathers, the Editio Typica Tertia Missalis Romani inserts a new optional collect for use in the ferial Mass of that day. I give the text; translation will be found in the Daily missal.
Deus, qui ecclesiae tuae in hoc tempore tribuis benigne beatam Mariam in passione Christi contemplanda devote imitari: da nobis, quaesumus; eiusdem Virginis intercessione, Unigenitio Filio tuo firmius in dies adhaerere et ad plenitudinem gratiae eius demum pervenire.
No harm in it; but ... don't you agree ... it plods. I also observe that it contains a phrase that I keep seeing in post-Concilar liturgical formulae: plenitudo gratiae. I suspect this of being semi-Pelagian: in these blessed guilt-free times, we no longer grovel in our wretchedness but just ask God for a bit of a top-up; not for grace but just for a bigger dose of it..
In these post-Conciliar days, we no longer commemorate the Dolours of our Lady; we make it personal and celebrate Maria Perdolens (the prefix per- intensifies the meaning of dolens.) The great 'Avignon' Bishop of Exeter, John de Grandisson (pronounced Grahnsen) in his arrangement of daily Marian votives to be said in in the Lady Chapel of his Cathedral listed the Friday Mass as Maria Compatiens.
Now - do I mistake me - we have there a way-in, do we not, to an understanding of Maria Coredemptrix?
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9 comments:
Thank you kind Pastor. If one says the Rosary daily, one might omit the Luminous Mysteries (if said) and revert to the three 'traditional' Mysteries, offering the Rosary of the Seven Dolours on Saturdays in lieu of the 'extra' Glorious Mysteries.
"plenitudo gratiae”
I would quibble with you Father about this phrase. I don’t see it in the same manner. Back in the day when we still believed in sin and our sinfulness, we looked to Our Lady – the only sinless human being in the history of the world – as, after Christ, the model to emulate.
Jesus is God and we can’t get close to emulating the divinity, but Our Lady is ‘one of us’ and so is a little more proximate in terms of emulation. But even here, as we are all tainted with Original Sin, a perfect imitation is out of our reach.
So, following our Baptism, we can still strive for ‘plenitudo gratiae’ in a pale imitation of her whom we invoke: “Ave, gratia plena…”
When I discussed this three or four years ago, I acknowledged that plenitudo gratiae went neatly with our Lady but pointed out that the phrase occurs in quite a number of newly composed collects which do not have that excuse.
Dear Father. This is off topic, but Happy St. Paddy's Day. Those of us who are Irish-Algonquin Catholics blessed to have ancestors from County Cork will celebrate in the traditional way by getting drunk and scalping protestants.
Today the surgeon told me it was open surgery to stop the aneurism blowing and my bleeding to death in minutes on the Cotswold line. Quite frightening. So tonight,Father,I rejoicecwith Rioja,lift a glass to that great Welshman St Patrick,and pray that when the fever is past,we will all be RC..Regular Catholics..no Ordinariate,nor LMS,nor Benedict/ Francis groupies...dosciples of the Master.
Today the surgeon told me it was open surgery to stop the aneurism blowing and my bleeding to death in minutes on the Cotswold line. Quite frightening. So tonight,Father,I rejoicecwith Rioja,lift a glass to that great Welshman St Patrick,and pray that when the fever is past,we will all be RC..Regular Catholics..no Ordinariate,nor LMS,nor Benedict/ Francis groupies...dosciples of the Master.
It is fitting to share this, which I typeset for use at mass a fw days ago:
http://postimg.org/image/ewpy1l5ep/
http://postimg.org/image/sy62nme3t/
The Stabat Mater with it's original early 13th century melody, set to a corrected english language metrical translation for singing. Most of the text follows that used in the Burgess and Palmer "Plainchant Gradual", with a few corrections. The latin version to this melody is already available online in an Italian early music magazine and from Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P.s own typeset version of it. Most people find this melody to be the most beautiful of them all, save for the polyphonic treatments.
I note that today was also the feast of St Cyril of Jerusalem; how nice to recall all three mysteries - Passion Friday; Our Lady of Sorrows; and St Cyril… I read through the three sets of euchological texts during Adoration this evening, as I hadn't been to Mass this morning.
Perhaps this is the version of the Pilgrim's Manual, Father? See page 64: http://www.walsinghamanglicanarchives.org.uk/1952pilgrimsmanual.htm
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