A Chapter Conference for the Friday of Passion Week

+ “Profíciat, quǽsumus, Dómine, plebs tibi dicáta piæ devotiónis afféctu: ut sacris actiónibus erudíta, quanto maiestáti tuæ fit grátior, tanto donis potióribus augeátur.”

Thus we shall pray in the Collect of the Mass of the Saturday of Passion Week tomorrow morning:

“May your people advance in the spirit of loving devotion, we ask you, Lord, that, being formed by these sacred observances, they may experience an increase of greater gifts and become more pleasing in the sight of your majesty.”

With all that lies before us in Holy Week, which is rightly claiming our attention and energies, this little collect could easily be left behind after Conventual Mass tomorrow morning as we get on with the necessary tasks of cutting olive branches and folding chasubles, etc. But that would be a pity, for I think it contains much which, if we ponder it carefully, can serve to ensure that our many activities in the coming week of grace are not simply displays of liturgical proficiency on our part, but in fact serve their God-given purpose – the purpose that this Collect so clearly articulates.

The “advance in the spirit of loving devotion” for which the Collect asks is, certainly, a worthy desire. But the Collect expresses more than a mere desire: it proposes the means by which this growth can come about. How? “Ut sacris actiónibus erudíta…” By “being formed by these sacred observances…”

My brothers we are about to enter wholeheartedly into what the East and West call “Great Week” because of the utterly cosmic magnitude and universal importance of the mysteries it celebrates: nothing less than the redemption of mankind by Christ’s saving sacrifice on the Cross and His glorious resurrection from the dead. And we are singularly privileged to be able to do so using the truly older forms of the Roman rite by means of a permission graciously granted to us by the Holy See through the good offices of our Bishop.

As we shall experience in the coming days, these rites are venerable for their antiquity and rich in their symbolism and meaning. Let these sacred actions form us! For if we celebrate these rites perfectly but have not grown in loving devotion, something is awry, something is wrong. If we do not “experience an increase of greater gifts and become more pleasing in the sight of [God’s] majesty” as a result of celebrating them, we will have somehow missed out on what Almighty God has in store for us in the coming days.

As an aside – though it is perhaps an important one – I ask that we do not fall into the trap of becoming liturgical dilettantes who swoon at the ‘rare sight’ of a broad stole or of a triple candle, etc. All the elements of the rites we shall celebrate have their purpose and meaning which has developed in tradition (and for which reason are themselves venerable): let us plumb these and allow them to serve the end of the rites, which tomorrow’s Collect articulates, in their due proportion. Certainly, we must celebrate them fully and with integrity and as well as we possibly can for the glory of Almighty God and for the literal edification (upbuilding) of His people. But in so doing we must not form ourselves or others into dilettantes or liturgical Luddites.

For what we do, we do not do for the sake of nostalgia or because we wish to retreat into a liturgical ghetto. Rather, we celebrate the ancient liturgical rites in all their richness and beauty because, as Pope Benedict XVI articulated so clearly, “It behoves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place,” (Letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum, 7 July 2007) and indeed because these very riches of our liturgical tradition form and sustain us in living the Christian life and our particular vocation today, in the twenty-first century, as so many young people and new vocations testify.

And so, in order not to miss this privileged opportunity to be formed by these sacred observances, to experience an increase of greater gifts and to become more pleasing in the sight of Almighty God, I ask – indeed, in so far as I am competent to do so, I insist – that no matter how busy we become with the necessary preparations for the liturgical rites and for our particular ministries within them, we do not fail to take at least one substantial period of time each day to prepare ourselves internally, in our hearts, minds and souls, for these rites by means of a silent lectio divina involving at least some of their content.

I am not asking that we seek to internalise everything in these rites or become experts in them overnight. That is impossible in but one Holy Week, and we have the remainder of our monastic lives, please God, in which to draw more deeply from these riches as we celebrate them with renewed fervour each year. But I am insisting that in this year of Our Lord 2018 we create the space, in silence, alone, in which these beautiful and ancient rites can begin their work of forming us into what Almighty God calls us to be.
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I am asking that above all in this Great Week we live the liturgy as internally as we celebrate it externally; that we give the Sacred Liturgy the chance to do its work of formation for which we shall pray at Mass in the morning. I am asking that we advance in the spirit of loving devotion by being formed by the sacred rites we are about to celebrate, and that we shall thereby experience an increase of God’s gifts and become more pleasing in His sight. +