(May 3) Perhaps the most upsetting loss which the Pacelli/Bugnini alliance inflicted upon the Roman Calendar. The Festival of the Invention [Finding] of the Holy Cross is so valuable, not, principally, because of a particular episode in the history of the Relics of the True Cross, but because it is a festival of the Lord's Passion in Eastertide. We see His glorious Sufferings and Triumphant Wounds in the light of His glorious Resurrection. It is true that, in Holy Week and on the September Festival of the Exaltation of the Cross, we are indeed fully aware of the fact that He Who suffered is the One Who rose again. That, as the Byzantines make clear, One of the Trinity suffered upon the Cross. But the perspective is different on May 3. In this day's Easter celebration we look upon the Cross from an unambiguously joyous and (Yes! Yes!) triumphalist viewpoint. An important Festival to celebrate!
(May 5) S Pius V ... think Lepanto (and read G K Chesterto's poem) ... think 'Tridentine' Rite ... Don't forget that there is a magnificent statue of this great pontiff in the Brompton Oratory, just to the right of the Lady Altar. Is this the only one in England? Shame on us!
(May 6) S John before the Latin Gate ... this festival, like the Invention of the Holy Cross, is still on the Calendar of the statutory Church of England Rite! As I have explained before, we keep it in the Ordinariate because it marked the beginning of the secret plotting and scheming which led to the formation of the English Ordinariate.
A most jolly celebration of the magnificent ecumenical initiative of the Unity Pope, Benedict XVI!
6 comments:
Amen, except that Pope Pacelli is innocent of that. The deletion of the once greater of the two feasts of the Cross (with a totally different particular occasion: St. Helena finding the Cross is not Emperor Heraclius retrieving and celebrating it) with the heavy popular custom attached that from this feast of the Holy Cross until the second in September, the fields are blessed every day with a particle of the same Holy Cross (in the Northern hemisphere I guess)... was done no earlier than by Pope St. John XXII.
It is the most regrettable loss of his reform (with all due respect to those having a fervent devotion to St. Philomena).
As for the reforms under Ven. Pius XII, Holy Week (especially the blessing of Palms) obviously stands out, as does preferring Advent II over our Lady Immaculate (something that just did not do, so this mistake was corrected; though it was repeated in the Novus Ordo) and as does the Octave of Epiphany, and to a somewhat less extent Ascension. After that, I'd put next place the Second Sunday of Christmas Fixed to January 5h - that's what it actually is, though the title is "Vigil of Epiphany"; but it's a pity too that all those Octaves, especially of Corpus Christi (which some but not I might think the yet greater loss compared to Ascension), our Lady's Assumption, All Saints and, surprise here, Childermas (the latter because having an octave allows the Mass on the actual feast to be said in violet, which without that octave, which is always red, really would lead us to confuse it with a day of penance) are gone. So, he was responsible for all that; but the removal of Invention of the Cross came later.
Father, following Divino Afflatu, I "enjoyed" Ad Matutinum this morning more than I ever had before (following the 1960 and, alas, the books of Paul VI). In Lent, during the Stations of the Cross, we say:
℣. Adorámus te, Christe, et benedícimus tibi.
℟. Quia per Crucem tuam redemísti mundum.
But today, in Eastertide, on this exquisite feast, we add a triumphant "Allelúja". What a joy indeed!
I found the Pauline readings in Nocturn I right on point, then was fascinated with the history account of Nocturn II, and perhaps understood the Nicodemus encounter in Nocturn III a little better.
What a joy! I am stunned that this glorious Feast was torn out of the liturgy and replaced, almost in like fashion as the "Gentes" tried to remove all memory of the Cross, Birth, and Resurrection by installing statues of Venus, Adonis, and Jupiter. May God bless Helena of old, and the relics one may yet find in the liturgy!
This feast of the Holy Cross on 3 May is a very ancient feast still celebrated in the Eastern Churches, and one of the not so many feastdays that we western christians had in common with them. It was sheer insanity to abolish it! I still celebrate it.
One of the great little touches of the Pius V Breviary is that it attaches the 'Gloria tibi Domine qui surrexisti a mortuis' doxology to the Vexilla Regis at Vespers on this Feast
In "The Old Calendar" May 4 was the feast of St. Monica. She being the mother of and converter of her son.....The Father of the West...the Greeks praise him also. The conciliar new church was not going to allow that! Move that feast day! It is So pre Vatican 2....and so not ecumenical are Augustine and Monica!
Oh, I guess the liturgy reformers were in this case just making way for the feast of the English martyrs (as I learned here) and very notably St. Florian, patron-saint of firefighters. The Volutary Firemen are in many smaller cities those who actually run the societal affairs (all of them, including the Corpus Christi procession). "And if a beer tent's in the village, where'll the firemen be? Outside on the crossroads, for traffic harmony!" (It's not just a Biermösl Blosn song playing with the expectation that they'll be inside drinking beer. It really is the case that they'll be out at the crossroads, policing traffic.
Just kidding. Why abolish the apparently ancient natalis of a great Saint, that allowed to have the Nain episode as a Gospel in Eastertide, just because they thought turning her feast into a sort of vigil for her son (the conversion of whom admittedly is the reason for the choice of the Gospel) was a nice idea?
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