The surprising start to the Sundays of Lent
After the dread of Septuagesima and the death sentence of Ash Wednesday, the Roman Liturgy takes a surprising change in tone.
After the dread of Septuagesima and the death sentence of Ash Wednesday, the Roman Liturgy takes a surprising change in tone.
Another liturgical change in tone
The ash on our foreheads marks the culmination of Septuagesima and the start of Lent.
Septuagesima itself marked a dramatic change in tone from the preceding Sundays. We have spent that season contemplating the fall of our first parents, the death sentence (and other punishments) given as a result of the first sin, our own desperate fallen state, and our need for a Redeemer.
Amidst the mourning and penitential chants of Ash Wednesday, we ourselves accept that sentence of death, imposed on each of us in Adam, and consent to its execution upon us. We are dust, and unto dust we shall return. We will weep over our sins, and do penance for them for the duration of Lent. We are ready and resolved, with God’s grace, to follow Christ in his passion and suffering for the execution of this sentence, and to offer our ourselves with him on Calvary.
But then, just as we make all these resolutions, something very interesting happens to the traditional Roman Liturgy, which may shed a different light on the season of Lent itself.
This is a part of our series The Roman Liturgy – an ongoing series of standalone pieces about the liturgy, hope, and the crisis in the Church.
The First Sunday of Lent
Parts of Psalm 90 are sung in all the propers of the Mass. Why this psalm? We might think that it is because Our Lord uses this psalm to rebuke the Devil during his temptations, but there seems to be more going on here. For a start, Christ merely refers to this psalm in passing, and for one temptation of three. The liturgical writer Fr Johannes Pinsk offers a further reason as to why this psalm so fills the Mass:
“The worshipers wrap themselves, as it were, in the words of this Psalm, they wind the pictures and phrases of this Psalm like cloths around head and body and so stand, robed entirely in this Psalm, before the God they have come to worship.
“But being robed in this Psalm and standing before God in such a robe means nothing else than standing in the infinite compassion of God which suffices for every situation.”1
This suggests that the prominence of Psalm 90 in the Mass of the First Sunday of Lent is not merely about Christ’s fasting and battle with Satan, but also about the ministration he receives from the angels afterward—a feature of this event we might be tempted to forget.
The psalm recalls not just the fasting and temptation, but also the relief and assistance given by the angels—something that is not absent from our own experience, given that Sundays traditionally represent a pause in the Lenten observances.
With this in view, we may hear the Psalm’s words in the Introit differently:
Introit: He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will deliver him and glorify him; with length of days I will gratify him.
V. You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty.2
As mentioned, extracts of this psalm are sung for the Gradual, Offertory and Communion, and it is sung in full for the Tract (even if it is often psalm-toned today). The Gradual is as follows:
Gradual: To His angels God has given command about you, that they guard you in all your ways.
V. Upon their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.
And the Offertory and the Communion:
Offertory/Communion: With His pinions the Lord will cover you, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His faithfulness is a buckler and a shield.
However, there seems to be no other way of putting it: it all seems very un-Lenten, at least as Lent is commonly understood. If Psalm 90 is the psalm of God’s compassion and mercy, then what is it doing at the start of Lent, just as we have accepted the sentence of Adam’s curse and are preparing to go to Calvary to die with Christ?
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