The Roman Liturgy: Lent and the Protection of God
“They stand, robed entirely in this Psalm, before the God they have come to worship.”
The ash on our foreheads marks the culmination of Septuagesima and the start of Lent.
We have spent Septuagesima 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 this 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.
The Roman Liturgy – an ongoing series of standalone pieces on the liturgical texts, the crisis in the Church and hope:
Septuagesima I: The Beginning of the Liturgical Year?
Septuagesima II: The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
Lent I: The Protection of God
Lent II: “What Think You of Christ?”
Lent III: Laetare Sunday and the Church
Passiontide I: The Silence of PassiontideChrist the King: “Are you a King, then?” – Christendom and the Social Kingship of Christ
Advent I: The Advent Liturgy and the Apocalypse
Advent II: The Close Presence of Christ in Advent
Advent III: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
Christmas and Christ's Triumph over Darkness
Epiphany as the Manifestation of Christ's Kingship
Epiphanytide: Ordinary Time or our Entrance into Eternity?
The First Sunday of Lent
In the Introit of the First Sunday of Lent, we hear the choir sing words from Psalm 90:
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.[1]
The same psalm is sung in all the other propers of the Mass. It is full for the Tract (even if it is often psalm-toned today). Extracts of this psalm are sung for the Gradual, Offertory and Communion. The Gradual:
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.
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 than that going on here. For a start, Christ merely refers to this psalm in passing, and for one temptation of three. This does not seem to be an adequate explanation as to why this psalm so fills this Mass.[2]
The liturgical writer Fr Johannes Pinsk gives his explanation:
“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.”[3]
But 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?
There seems to be no other way of putting it: it all seems very un-Lenten, at least as Lent is commonly understood. Pinsk suggests that the answer lies, as with Septuagesima, in the catechumens and the trials that await them.
The Paschal Cycle and Baptism
The period from Septuagesima to Pentecost contains several distinct periods, each with its own spirit. For example:
Holy Week and the Holy Triduum
Easter and Eastertide
Ascension and Ascensiontide
Pentecost
These periods are sometimes treated as if they can be blurred into Lent and Easter. But, for example, Lent is not one long Passiontide, and treating as if it is can make us overlook certain aspects of the spirit of both seasons.
Nonetheless, the seasons of this cycle are all linked: first, by their commemoration of Christ’s work of redemption on the Cross; but also by the application of that redemption in baptism.
Easter is the historic time of baptism and the reception of converts, and the seasons beforehand point towards this. In our day, we baptise throughout the year, but it is fitting that the liturgy maintain this focus as a matter of tradition. There are always some who are baptised at the Easter Vigil, and in any case, these texts also apply to those of us who have been in the ranks of Christ’s army for years, or even decades.
It benefits us, too, to enter into the spirit of the paschal cycle and each of its separate seasons, by considering what our state would be without Christ, and by renewing our gratitude and commitment to our God and Sovereign Lord.
Preparation for baptism
As we have already seen, the two and a half weeks of Septuagesima starts with the creation and fall of Man in Genesis, in which we are forced to recognise the desperate degradation of our race, and our need for a Redeemer. Running parallel to the focus of Genesis is the overarching idea of the seventy years of exile during the Babylonian Captivity.
The liturgical texts of the Septuagesima season conveyed darkness and anxiety, although increasingly giving way to trust. They presented us with the reality of the persecutions which face those who want to be saved by this Redeemer.
Even in something as apparently charming as the epistle of Quinquagesima, so often read today at weddings, St Paul writes of suffering and martyrdom:
“[I]f I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”
All this leads up to the Gospel reading of Quinquagesima Sunday, in which Christ proclaims his imminent Passion:
“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and all things shall be accomplished which were written by the prophets concerning the Son of man. For he shall be delivered to the Gentiles and shall be mocked and scourged and spit upon. And after they have scourged him, they will put him to death. And the third day he shall rise again.”
In all these texts, the Church is warning her catechumens that they are to prepare to lose everything. In baptism, they will die to sin and to the “old Adam,” but they may well find that other aspects of their comfortable lives are over as well. That which is a warning for them, should be a reminder for us.
But once we have been warned and reminded, we are perhaps in a better position to see why the First Sunday of Lent is saturated with Psalm 90.
The state of the catechumens
Pinsk writes:
“The catechumen who registered on the baptismal list must have been aware that he was thereby burning behind him all bridges to his old economic, social, familial and civic life. Any day he could be denounced, arrested, killed. He was hanging, so to speak, in the air.
“And now the Church speaks to the catechumens about the merciful compassion of God in those wonderful concrete phrases peculiar to Psalm go.”[4]
The liturgy of the First Sunday of Lent, instead of being a meditation on the Passion, seems to represent the Church’s answer and comfort for the catechumen, and for us. She has shown us our state and our need for a saviour, she has warned us of what this salvation will cost us: but now, she reassures us that we are not alone. This same spirit appears in the epistle, in which St Paul powerfully contrasts his own wretched state with what he has received in Christ:
“[I]n all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulation, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in prisons, in seditions, in labours, in watchings, in fastings, In chastity, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in sweetness, in the Holy Ghost, in charity unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God:
“[B]y the armour of justice on the right hand and on the left: by honour and dishonour: by evil report and good report: as deceivers and yet true: as unknown and yet known: As dying and behold we live: as chastised and not killed: As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing: as needy, yet enriching many: as having nothing and possessing all things.”
Amidst the ever-growing darkness of our time – not least due to the persecution of Catholics for holding to the traditional faith, liturgy and religion of their grandparents – the Church’s liturgy asks the catechumens, and us, the question: Do we realise that all this – the Epistle, the Propers – applies to us? Pinsk writes:
“The newly baptized who goes to prison: is he free or not free? He is free, unless the freedom of the children of God is but an imaginary phantom and no solid reality.
“And the martyr who sacrifices his life, pouring it out with his blood-does he die or live? He lives if there is a true life with the risen Christ.
“And finally, the Christian who possesses nothing more whatsoever on this earth, who has been totally stripped and dispossessed so that he can truly call nothing more his own – is he unpropertied or rich? He is rich if the communion with Jesus Christ also includes a participation in the fullness of his life.”[5]
Many are afraid of what the future will bring, whether it be the suppression of the Roman Rite, the excommunication of traditionalists, and who knows what else. Exactly what will happen as this ecclesiastical crisis continues, and exactly how one should respond, are questions for another day. Today, and each day, we make the words of Psalm 90 our own: “To His angels God has given command about you, that they guard you in all your ways.” Today we must listen, and realise that we are being taught is this:
“Neither God nor the risen Christ is ever poor, ever trammelled, ever dead; and so whoever is united with God through the risen Christ cannot in the crucial and real sense of the words be either dead or trammelled or poor.”[6]
The Combat in the Desert
Once we have entered into this spirit, perhaps we will understand Christ’s combat with the Devil in a new light as well. Our Lord is in a situation which may appear weak, lonely, without food or necessary goods, and without the promise shown in his life so far. Pinsk writes:
“[O]ver against him stands Satan, who can dispose of all the things the Lord lacks, Satan who positively preens himself upon being able to procure for the Lord what the Lord does not have What a horrible confrontation: the Lord as the weak one, the failure, the powerless one; and Satan as the one who provides food, wins over the masses, distributes the kingdoms of the world.
“Thus it is that they confront one another. And so does Satan confront the Christian community in its powerlessness, its helplessness and its poverty, and make his tempting propositions to it.”[7]
But the Devil is not victorious over Christ. Nor will he be victorious over the Church; and nor will he be victorious over us, if we “wrap ourselves in the precious, protective and warming mantle of the compassionate mercy of God in all privations and renunciations which time brings with it for the individual and for the Church as whole.”[8]
This language recalls St Paul’s image of putting on Christ, and Our Lord’s own instruction to his Apostles in the face of trials and persecutions, to abide in him. It is only in him that the following words of Psalm 90 can be true:
“Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon.” (Ps. 90.13)
As time goes on in our own troubled day, it becomes ever clearer that no other course is open to us but this. There is no hope outside of Christ, and no route before us without us putting him on and abiding in him.
Penance
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Lent is a time for serious penance, both in terms of repentance, and mortification. This is manifested in the liturgies of Lent (including on the Sundays), especially in the repetition of the beautiful mournfulness of the Ash Wednesday tract three times a week. The sorrow appears daily in the same recurring musical leitmotifs in the other tracts as well. Sorrow for sin, and mortification and penance, are central themes of the weekdays of Lent.
We should take seriously the warning of Benedict XIV, who taught in 1741:
“The observance of Lent is the very badge of the Christian warfare. By it we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the cross of Christ. By it we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it we gain strength against the princes of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help.
“Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God’s glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion and a danger to Christian souls.
“Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.”[9]
But while we must keep Lent with rigour, this does not entail treating it as a sort of homogenous Passiontide. Lent has an atmosphere and spirit which is distinct to that of Passiontide, marked specifically by these Sundays, but also by the other weekdays.
We all know that the Sundays of Lent are something of a reprise from the season’s penances. The “un-Lenten” spirit of the First Sunday continues over the following four weeks – but rather than being “un-Lenten,” this seems to be the true spirit of the Sundays of Lent. They are all aimed at presenting the power of Christ to those about to be baptised – and to us, who perhaps will be flagging under the fast.
This is the sort of truth that we need to hold onto today, as the days of our exile (discussed in the previous part) grind on, as chaos continues to reign, and as the darkness grows ever deeper.
Conclusion
Throughout this series, we have seen several occasions in which the liturgy presents us with ideas and concepts that seem to be missed by many today.
We must always keep our minds on the saving Passion of Christ. We should make our own the words of St Paul:
“For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ: and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2.2)
We should pray, as did St Thomas More:
“To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me; for His benefits incessantly to give Him thanks.”[10]
Noting the distinction between Lent and Passiontide is not intended to detract from this. But we should consider each Mass in the Missal, and respect the Church’s own division of her seasons, lest we become inattentive to how she is forming us. Neglecting the distinct spirit of Lent might even obscure the spirit of Passiontide for us.
Flattening these periods together, and imposing our devotional understandings of what Lent should be – whether that be in our own private prayer, or in our choice of hymns and chants at home or as choir directors, or anything else – can deprive us of the salutary and sometimes surprising formation which we receive in the traditional Roman Liturgy – which is, as always, our “pearl of great price.”
In the example of this First Sunday, acting as if we are already in Passiontide might cause us to neglect this understanding of God’s protection for his people, “compelled to be ‘in the wilderness’ and faced with the apparent supremacy of Satan.”[11] Christ’s suffering in the Desert was distinct to the suffering of his Passion.
As we shall see in subsequent parts, the spirit of the First Sunday of Lent actually extends to the entirety of Lent, and shows the importance of keeping a clear distinction between the four Sundays of Lent, and the periods of Passiontide and Holy Week.
But all this, and why the Lenten liturgies are such an important part of preparing for the Great and Holy Week that leads up to Easter, are subjects for the next part.
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Further Reading:
Dom Prosper Guéranger – The Liturgical Year
Fr Johannes Pinsk – The Cycle of Christ
Fr Leonard Goffine – The Church's YearLabelling other Catholics as “radical traditionalists” is immoral
Our Lord in the Desert – from Fr Aloysius Ambruzzi SJ’s “Companion to the Spiritual Exercises”
How should Catholics approach Lent today? Timeless advice from John Henry Newman
The Roman Liturgy – an ongoing series of standalone pieces on the liturgical texts, the crisis in the Church and hope:
Septuagesima I: The Beginning of the Liturgical Year?
Septuagesima II: The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
Lent I: The Protection of God
Lent II: “What Think You of Christ?”
Lent III: Laetare Sunday and the Church
Passiontide I: The Silence of PassiontideChrist the King: “Are you a King, then?” – Christendom and the Social Kingship of Christ
Advent I: The Advent Liturgy and the Apocalypse
Advent II: The Close Presence of Christ in Advent
Advent III: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
Christmas and Christ's Triumph over Darkness
Epiphany as the Manifestation of Christ's Kingship
Epiphanytide: Ordinary Time or our Entrance into Eternity?
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[1] All the Propers are taken from https://divinumofficium.com/
[2] That said, many things in the Roman liturgy appear for prosaic reasons, and only later acquired the symbolic meanings that we might today consider normative. However, even such a prosaic origin does not exclude considerations, nor attempts to understand what may have been the intentions of providence in this inclusion. Cf. Fr Adrian Fortescue’s descriptions in The Holy Week Book, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, London, 1913.
[3] Johannes Pinsk, The Cycle of Christ, trans. Arthur Gibson, Desclee Company, New York, 1966, 21. Fr Johannes Pinsk (1891-1957) was involved with the twentieth century liturgical movement in ways that many readers would consider regrettable. However, his works have a wealth of interesting information about the liturgical year, which I would like to share. They also contain some things which traditional Catholics might not appreciate. My purpose here is to present what is good, along with some comments, to help us appreciate the holy Roman Liturgy.
[4] Pinsk 22
[5] Pinsk 24
[6] Pinsk 24
[7] Pinsk 24-5
[8] Pinsk 25
[9] Benedict XIV, Constitution Non ambigimus, quoted in Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year Vol. V, ‘Lent’ (1949), trans. Dom Laurence Shepherd, OSB., St Bonaventure Publications, 2000, pp 10-11.
[10] Thomas Edward Bridgett, The Wisdom and Wit of Blessed Thomas More, 1892. Burns and Oates Ltd., London. p 93.
[11] Pinsk 25.