What a massive difference between the propers for today in the old and the new rites! In the old rites, sensuality so insistent and so fierce that a cold-hearted pedant might condemn it for being cloying. As for the Novus Ordo, one has to comment that (1) Uncle Arthur's Merry Men, in composing a new Preface, were amusingly unable to avoid an elementary schoolboy howler in their Latin; and (2) this great Saint is, in some modern circles, subsumed into movements for the ordination of women to sacerdotal ministries. A medieval monkish hagiographer would have hung his head in shame at the rubbish which has been foisted on S M M by the feminists of our own time. Was she really a kipper-curer?
The older propers got under way last night with those wonderful Mattins readings from the Song of Solomon ... the woman, distaught by love, searching through the vicos et plateas for the one she loves, ending with the heart-wrenching set me as a seal upon thy heart ... for love is as strong as death. And, in the second Nocturn, we have S Gregory's fine synthesis of the narratives about sinful women kissing the Lord's feet.
Wozzat? You criticise Pope Gregory for mixing together traditions about different women? Shame upon you! You should know better than to cticicise a pope! S Gregory is preaching in the full-blooded style of a robust and fertile oral culture, in which allusion, quotation, combination are integral parts of narrative process. The post-conciliar fiddlers either ignorantly did not know this, or wantonly rejected it (perhaps they were all biblical fundamentalists). And, incidentally, the rather good Methodist commentator on S John, C K Barrett, points out that, in the Garden, me mou haptou, present imperative, implies that S M M is trying to clasp the Lord's feet.
Feet again ...
One question with which readers may be able to help me is this.
In the Third Nocturn, S Augustine, in his homily, remarks that Noli me tangere occurs in Isaias. Can anybody show me where?
There could be profundities here.
You quoted it yourself, Father, a few years ago:
ReplyDeletehttp://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2017/07/noli-me-tangere.html?m=1
St Augustine may be alluding to a passage in Isaias 65:5, which reads: "Crying out, 'Hold back, do not touch me; I am too sacred for you!"'
ReplyDeletePossibly answered in the comments to an old post of yours, Father:
ReplyDeletehttp://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2017/07/noli-me-tangere.html
Clement Harrold
ReplyDeletehttps://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-retrieval-of-the-traditional-view-of-mary-magdalene/#print
is worth reading.
Your question Isaias brought some responses here
http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2017/07/noli-me-tangere.html
Is 52:11? Is the Lord suggesting his just-risen body is ritually unclean?
ReplyDeleteI rather think thst our Lords judt-,risen Body was too glorious, too sacred, too electrifying for her to then touch.
ReplyDelete