7 July 2019

Green

Tastes differ, but I greatly relish getting back to these delicious Sundays after Trinity, in green vestments, with their exquisitely simple yet compact Collects from the old Roman Sacramentaries, penned by pontiffs going back to S Leo. Today, we have Deprecationem nostram , quaesumus, Domine, benignus exaudi: et quibus supplicandi praestas affectum; tribue defensionis auilium. Or, as Archbishop Cranmer rendered it, Lorde, we beseche thee mercifully to heare us, and unto whom thou hast geven an heartie desyre to pray; graunt that by thy mightie ayde we may be defended. (Later meddlers filled it out by adding and comforted in all dangers and adversities.)

But you are puzzled. That is not the Collect you heard at your EF Mass this morning! No; because  there are dislocations in the Masses of these Sundays, between the Southern European propers found in the Missal of S Pius V and the Northern European propers found, for example, in the English Missals of the Sarum, Hereford, and York 'Uses' and still preserved, with only very minor changes, in the Book of Common Prayer.

Furthermore, the old Mass for the first Sunday after Pentecost is appointed in the Use of S Pius V to be used on weekdays after Trinity Sunday, while the English Uses transferred that Mass to the following Sunday. Hence dislocations: the EF and the BCP have the same Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, but distributed over different Sundays. And today's Collect, absent from the post Pentecosten Masses (but used elsewhere by S Pius) creates an additional factor of complication.

Because of the proximity of the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul, in the Sarum and similar Uses, a reading from I Peter is paired on Trinity 5 with the Gospel about the Lord teaching from Simon's boat. This sort of connectivity between Temporale and Sanctorale used to be more common.

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