Catholic Media in U.S. to Publish Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition
By Tessa Gervasini
CNA—The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has chosen Catholic media companies Ascension and Word on Fire to publish the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition.
The Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office, is a set of daily prayers that priests and religious are obliged to pray and that many lay Catholics also partake in. The prayers are set according to the Church calendar and are composed of psalms, hymns, and readings from Scripture.
In November 2012, the U.S. bishops voted to revise the translation, following English translations of the Roman Missal, Third Edition, and the 2001 Vatican document Liturgiam Authenticam. The approval process was completed in November 2024 and on May 29, 2025, the USCCB sent the completed manuscript to the Holy See for confirmation.
Ascension and Word on Fire, both known for their print, online, and video works, announced October 7 that they will each publish the new version of the Liturgy of the Hours. A release date for the daily prayer will be shared upon final approval from the Vatican.
The current edition was translated and designed in the 1970s, making the new version the first updated English translation of the prayer in more than 50 years. It has been developed over the past decade by the USCCB in collaboration with the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).
Adoremus Bulletin
For the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy
On Being Read by a Great Text: The Liturgy and the Liberal Arts
By Austin Walker
In a 2017 lecture for the Lumen Christi Institute, Jared Ortiz, a professor of theology and the director of the St. Benedict Institute at Hope College in Holland, MI, put forward a provocative claim: the liturgy fulfills the promise of the liberal arts. Slightly restated, a great books education is completed and integrated by the corporate prayer of the Church in the Mass and the Divine Office. Dr. Ortiz recounted his own experience as a student at the University of Chicago, where “the life of the mind” was sometimes pursued in a compartmentalized way: “The Mass [on the other hand] addressed my whole person in all its dimensions: intellectual, spiritual, affective, moral, physical, aesthetic, temporal, immortal, and so on…. The experience of Mass provided a sympathetic knowledge of the true, good, and beautiful by allowing me to enter into and dwell within these realities. The Mass is a place where I experienced all things holding together.”1 The liturgy combined the sensual and intelligible into a unified vision of reality. What could have been separated into discrete sciences and disciplines was united and oriented toward praise of the divine.
The integrative power of the liturgy derives in no small part from the fact that the liturgy instantiates a particular method or habit of reading. The liturgy performs what Alasdair MacIntyre has called “the Augustinian conception”2 of inquiry: for certain texts to be read well, they must not only be interpreted by the reader; the reader must allow the text to interpret him. A reader must not only ask questions of the text, but have questions asked of him in turn.
“ The integrative power of the liturgy derives in no small part from the fact that the liturgy instantiates a particular method or habit of reading.”
a university committed to scientific method and the advance of knowledge. Even Great Books programs are liable to miss it. But it has not gone entirely unappreciated. St. John Henry Newman conceptualized a “collegiate principle” to counterbalance the tendencies of the “university principle,” and he made the college the home of both the liberal arts and the liturgy. Nor should it be a surprise that in institutes and academic departments shaped by participation in the liturgy, this Augustinian mode is often appreciated and preserved today.
University vs. College
Story continued on page 2
The habit of placing oneself at the foot of a text predates the establishment of the liturgy. The ancient study of the Greek and Latin classics through the liberal arts of the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) encouraged patient, careful, and repeated reading. But in the medieval monasteries the liberal arts, the Church Fathers, and Scripture came together to produce a new and characteristically Christian humanism. In the monasteries this Augustinian mode of reading is fully developed, and the liturgy is established as the perfected representation thereof. In the liturgical practices of the monastery, the monks were constantly reminded that there are certain texts—especially, but not only, Sacred Scripture—which must not only be read carefully, but must be allowed, in their turn, to read the reader back to himself.3 These texts must be chewed on, reread, meditated upon, until they are ultimately inscribed on one’s heart. Scripture, treated in this way, provided a kind of grammar in which the monk’s own life became legible.
This Augustinian mode of reading can easily be forgotten in
Do You Read Me?
In 1856, St. John Henry Newman took stock of a university situation not dissimilar to Dr. Ortiz’s and gestured toward a resolution when he elaborated on the balance and complementarity of a true education. A proper education ought to integrate both the “university principle” and the “collegiate principle.” The university was the site for the advancement of knowledge, the systematic study of the disciplines, and the sciences, generally. The college was home to another kind of learning: it was for the formation of intellectual and moral character, the study of literature and the classics, and the home of religious discipline and devotion—that is, the home of the liturgy.4
Both the college and the university were sites of learning— but learning in different modes. The collegiate mode Newman would analogize to the poetry of Benedictine monasticism, as contrasted with the scientific inquiry of the Dominican scholastic. Benedictine poetic collegiate learning was intensely personal: it occurred among others with whom one lived; it raised personal and existential questions; it was perennial rather than new. The college was home for both the liberal arts and corporate prayer.5
Christopher Dawson, the great English historian, has described the historical development of Newman’s Benedictine
Please see READING on page 4
Adoremus Bulletin NOVEMBER 2025
God does. Austin Walker explains how we’re each an open book, or should be, and to the extent that we comprehend the liturgy, it is also comprehending—and conforming—us to Christ 1
Have Mass for a Song
And have a song for Mass. Adam Bartlett offers some practical ways for priests to sing the Eucharistic Prayers with less investment of time, talent, and treasure than many might think 3 Imagine That!
According to Richard Kaleb Hammond, as portals to the imagination, icons represent one of the more sublime forms of sacred art through which we can find more per-
fect unity with the divine 6 Into the Mystics
Thirteenth-century liturgical mystics, St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde, says Kevin Magas, envision a profound integration of private devotion with the communal prayer of the Church 8 Altar Christi
In reviewing Altar and Church: Principles of Liturgy from Early Christianity by archaeologist Stefan Heid, Jacob Zepp unearths some fresh developments about the altar in Church history 12
The liturgy formed the monks through their daily participation within it. In being taught how to see themselves within the texts of Scripture, the monks learned how to turn their knowledge and love of secular literature toward the ends Scripture directed.
“Our goal is to create a reverent and beautiful edition that embodies the dignity of the Church’s common prayer. This new translation marks an extraordinary moment for Catholics everywhere,” said Jonathan Strate, president and CEO of Ascension, in an announcement. Strate said Ascension is “honored to serve the Church” by being one of the publishers.
Ascension, known for its popular podcast “The Bible in a Year with Mike Schmitz,” reported publishing the prayers “furthers its mission in creating resources to help Catholics deepen their prayer life, joining the universal Church in encountering the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith.”
“When you pray the Liturgy of the Hours, you are uniting your prayer to the entire Church,” Father Schmitz said in a recent video explaining the Liturgy of the Hours. He added: “It gives us the opportunity to create holy time… by stopping at various moments throughout the day and calling upon the Lord, renewing our mind with his word.”
“This is more than a publishing project—it is a spiritual mission,” Word on Fire founder Bishop Robert Barron said in a press release. “We want to help thousands of priests, religious, and laypeople pray more deeply and more beautifully each day.” The new version, he said, is “a profound service to the Church and to the world.”
Word on Fire has “spent the past three years introducing tens of thousands of Catholics to this rhythm of daily prayer through our monthly booklets,” said Brandon Vogt, senior publishing director at Word on Fire. “This four-volume series is the next step…that will draw countless more into the Church’s ancient prayer, day by day, hour by hour.”
The Liturgy of the Hours is “the Church’s highest prayer outside the Mass and sacraments,” Vogt said. “Our aim is simple—to create the most beautiful, most prayerful, most accessible edition of the Liturgy of the Hours ever produced.”
Vatican Establishes Feast Days of St. Carlo Acutis, St. Pier Giorgio Frassati
By Victoria Cardiel
CNA—The Catholic Church will commemorate the liturgical memorial of St. Carlo Acutis on October 12 and of St. Pier Giorgio Frassati on July 4. The two young men were canonized September 7 by Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican.
In the case of St. Carlo Acutis, the Italian teenager who died in 2006 and was beatified in Assisi in October 2020, his feast day was set for October 12, coinciding with the anniversary of his death from fulminant leukemia at the age of 15.
The decree of the then-Congregation—now Dicastery—for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, promulgated after the beatification, set the date for the calendars of the dioceses of Assisi and Milan in addition to authorizing its celebration in other communities that requested it.
Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young man from Turin who died in 1925 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1990, will be commemorated every year on July 4, also coinciding with the day of his death. His memorial Mass is celebrated especially in Italy and in youth communities that consider him a patron and spiritual role model.
Both saints, commemorated on the date they passed into eternal life, have become role models of faith and commitment for young people. Acutis is known for his witness of faith in the digital world and his love for the Eucharist, and Frassati was described by St. John Paul II as a “man of the Beatitudes.” Their intense spiritual life and commitment to charitable works continue to inspire new generations of Catholics around the world.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Pope Leo XIV’s First Major Document Addresses the Poor
By Hannah Brockhaus
CNA—In the first major document of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV writes that the poor are not only objects of charity but also evangelists who can prompt us to conversion through their example of weakness and reliance on God.
“The poor can act as silent teachers for us, making us conscious of our presumption and instilling within us a rightful spirit of humility,” Pope Leo writes in Dilexi Te (“I Have Loved You”), released by the Vatican on October 9. “The elderly, for example, by their physical frailty, remind us of our own fragility, even as we attempt to conceal it behind our apparent prosperity and outward appearance.
NEWS & VIEWS
The poor...remind us how uncertain and empty our seemingly safe and secure lives may be.”
The pontiff quotes his predecessor throughout the document, which was first drafted during the previous pontificate and draws heavily on Pope Francis’s first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, on the joy of the Gospel. An apostolic exhortation is one of the most authoritative genres of papal teaching, typically focused on the pastoral application of doctrine.
Christ’s whole life is an example of poverty, Pope Leo writes, and the Church, if it wants to belong to Christ, must give the poor a privileged place.
“For Christians, the poor are not a sociological category but the very ‘flesh’ of Christ,” he writes. “The Lord took on a flesh that hungers and thirsts, and experiences infirmity and imprisonment.”
Pope Leo signed the exhortation on October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, who is traditionally known as “Il Poverello” (“the Little Poor Man”).
The pontiff explains at the beginning of the document that he received it as an inheritance from Pope Francis, who was working on it during the final months of his life.
“How much of this [document] is Francis, and how much of this is Leo? It’s both,” Cardinal Michael Czerny, head of the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development, said at an October 9 presentation of the document, emphasizing that the document is now part of papal magisterium.
Cardinal Czerny pushed back on repeated attempts by reporters to draw political connections between the document and the United States and elsewhere.
The world is “in big trouble and part of the troubles are referred to in [Dilexi Te],” he continued. “That doesn’t mean that I can go to so-and-so and say that ‘Dilexi Te went after you.’”
The document traces the Church’s perennial teaching on the poor, drawing on the Old and New Testaments, the practice of the early Christian community, the writings of Church Fathers and doctors, the lives of the saints, the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and the magisterium of the popes since St. John XXIII.
Pope Leo also commends the example of contemplative and active religious orders throughout history that have helped the poor with health care, food, shelter, and education.
“Every movement of renewal within the Church has always been a preferential concern for the poor. In this sense, her work with the poor differs in its inspiration and method from the work carried out by any other humanitarian organization,” he writes.
Technological progress has not eradicated poverty, which only continues to appear in diverse forms, the pope writes. He defines the poor to include the incarcerated, victims of sexual exploitation, those affected by the degradation of the environment, and immigrants.
“The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges,” he says. “And she knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”
Pope Leo denounces prejudices that he says can lead Christians to neglect their duty to the poor.
“There are those who say: ‘Our task is to pray and teach sound doctrine’ [and argue] that it is the government’s job to care for [the poor], or that it would be better not to lift them out of their poverty but simply to teach them to work,” he writes.
Sometimes “pseudo-scientific data are invoked to support the claim that a free-market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty” or that the rich can enact more effective solutions, the pope writes.
Pope Leo condemns such views as worldly and superficial, and “devoid of any supernatural light.”
Dilexi Te also emphasizes the spiritual needs of the poor, arguing that those are more important than the material, yet often ignored by the Church.
It is not a question of “providing for welfare assistance and working to ensure social justice. Christians should also be aware of another form of inconsistency in the way
they treat the poor. In reality, “the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care,” the pope writes, quoting Pope Francis.
Pope Leo ends his exhortation by emphasizing the duty of almsgiving, which he claims has fallen out of fashion, even among believers.
“Almsgiving, however modest, brings a touch of ‘pietas’ [‘piety’] into a society otherwise marked by the frenetic pursuit of personal gain,” he says, adding that, though it will not be the solution to poverty in the world, it will touch our hearts.
“Our love and our deepest convictions need to be continually cultivated, and we do so through our concrete actions,” he continues. “Remaining in the realm of ideas and theories, while failing to give them expression through frequent and practical acts of charity, will eventually cause even our most cherished hopes and aspirations to weaken and fade away. For this very reason, we Christians must not abandon almsgiving. It can be done in different ways, and surely more effectively, but it must continue to be done. It is always better at least to do something rather than nothing.”
Pope Leo XIV Sends Message to Exorcists Gathered in Rome
By Victoria Cardiel
CNA—Pope Leo XIV addressed a message to the approximately 300 exorcist priests who came together September 15–20 for the 15th International Gathering of the International Association of Exorcists (IAE) at the Fraterna Domus House of Spirituality in Sacrofano, near Rome.
The Holy Father expressed his appreciation for the priests who dedicate themselves to the “delicate and necessary ministry of the exorcist.” The pontiff urged them to carry it out “both as a ministry of liberation and as a ministry of consolation.”
In a message signed by Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the pope also exhorted pastors to provide spiritual support to the faithful who are suffering.
Pope Leo emphasized the need to “support the faithful truly possessed by the evil one with prayer and the invocation of Christ’s effective presence, so that through the sacramental of exorcism the Lord may grant victory over Satan.”
The pope’s words were read at the opening of the event—held every two years—by Father Francesco Bamonte, vice president of the IAE and moderator of the conference.
During the presentations, Monsignor Karel Orlita, president of the IAE and exorcist for the Diocese of Brno in the Czech Republic, highlighted the beauty of the ecclesial communion in which this ministry, firmly rooted in the Gospel, is embedded, and underlined the importance of the ongoing formation that the association promotes in Italy and abroad.
He also recalled the official approval of the new IAE statutes by the Dicastery for the Clergy on March 25 as a sign of support for the mission of the association, which recently surpassed 1,000 members.
During the conference, topics of great theological and practical relevance were addressed, the organizers stated in a press release.
During his address, the undersecretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Bishop Aurelio García Macías, presented a review of the Rite of Exorcisms, including types of extraordinary diabolical action, the role of the exorcist, the richness of the signs, and the correction of errors, always emphasizing the centrality of Christ in the rite. Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the dicastery, celebrated the opening Mass of the conference, highlighting the Church’s support for the faithful suffering from the action of the devil.
Father Gabriele Amorth, founder and first president of the IAE, who died nine years ago, was also remembered.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
DIRECTOR: Christopher Carstens
Adoremus Bulletin
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EDITOR: Michael Brummond
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Liturgical Endgame: God’s Glory, Our Salvation
By Michael Brummond, Editor
When I first taught my son to play chess, we went over the basics: the names of the pieces (“That’s a knight, not a horsey.”), how the pieces move, the way each piece captures—even the relative value of the pieces. After playing for a bit, I realized I had neglected to tell him something rather important—the point of the game! You win a game of chess by checkmating your opponent’s king. Without the end in mind, my son’s moves, though technically legal, were random and purposeless. The end determines the value of every move. Only with the goal in mind do I know if it is wise to sacrifice my queen. Without an end, there is a lack of direction and meaning.
The same is true of the liturgy. Before we decide how to carry out the liturgy—what hymns or chants we sing, which vestments are appropriate, or how to arrange the sanctuary—we must know what the liturgy is for We must start with the end in mind. If we don’t, we risk treating the details as ends in themselves, missing the forest for the trees. Worse, we may inadvertently instrumentalize the liturgy for our own ends or agendas. It is essential, therefore, never to lose sight of the two inseparable ends of the liturgy: the glorification of God and the sanctification of man (see Sacrosanctum Concilium, 5, 7, 10, 59, 61, 83, 112).
We know all about glory in the liturgy. It shows up in its prayers: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” “Glory to God in the highest.…” We say these words constantly, but what do they mean? God is infinitely perfect from all eternity. Nothing we do contributes the smallest addition to his perfection, goodness, or beatitude. What, then, does it mean to glorify God?
God is infinite goodness, but everything he created he also pronounced good. Goodness in created things is “on loan” from the Creator; these things are good insofar as they reflect in some finite way the infinite goodness of God. Rocks, roses, and rabbits each give some testimony to God’s wisdom, beauty, or some other divine attribute. As Eucharistic Prayer III says, “all creation rightly gives you praise.” This manifestation of God’s perfection in created reality is his glory. “The glory of God consists in the realization of this
own glorification of the Father and in his work of our redemption.
manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 294).
Unlike the rest of visible creation around us, we (along with the angels) have an intellect to know the truth, and a will to choose the good in love. While rocks, roses, and rabbits give glory to God simply by being that which God created them to be, we participate in God’s goodness in a deeper way through our freely chosen acts. Our words and actions, when rightly ordered, proclaim God’s majesty. In us, creation’s mute praise finds a voice. St. Augustine defined glory as clara notitia cum laude, or “brilliant notoriety with praise.” Nowhere is this truer than in the liturgy. In the Church’s worship, Christ himself renders perfect glory to the Father in their bond of love which is their Spirit. Every chant, every prayer, every rubric is joined to his eternal praise. The liturgy is the privileged place where God’s glory resounds most perfectly on earth.
Glorifying God goes hand in hand with that other
Singing the Eucharistic Prayer
By Adam Bartlett
In its noblest and most normative form, virtually every word of the Mass is meant to be sung (see General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM), 39–41; Sacrosanctum Concilium, 113; and Musicam Sacram, 5, 27). And yet, in most parishes today, the high point of the entire celebration—the Eucharistic Prayer—is perhaps the part that is sung the least.
Among the reasons given for this situation, we might often hear: Singing the Eucharistic Prayer would make the Mass far too long. The Roman Rite had a silent Canon for 1,000 years—why would we start singing it now? If the priest were to drone on and on, people might lose attention or interest. It’s just too difficult for most priests to sing well, and many of them were never taught how. And the list could go on. This article responds to these common objections and makes a case for why we should strive to make the sung Eucharistic Prayer, at least in some meaningful way, a part of our normal liturgical practice today. It also offers some guidance to priests in order to help them learn to chant it well, along with some helpful tips for introducing it in a parish setting for the first time.
Basis in the Roman Missal
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal offers the primary basis for singing the entire Mass, including the Eucharistic Prayer, when it says: “in the rubrics and in the norms that follow, words such as ‘say’ and ‘proclaim’ are to be understood either of singing or of reciting” (GIRM, 38). Put differently, any word that can be spoken in the Mass can also be sung. More explicitly, it goes further to say that “it is most appropriate that the Priest sing those parts of the Eucharistic Prayer for which musical notation is provided” (GIRM, 147).
While the first of these directives was also contained in the 1975 General Instruction, what the pre-2011 editions lacked was actual musical notation for the full text of the Eucharistic Prayer in its various forms. The Roman Missal presently in force has rectified this situation by presenting full musical settings of each Prayer immediately following their text-only versions. The Order of Mass itself emphasizes this possibility, saying that “in all Masses, the Priest celebrant is permitted to sing parts of the Eucharistic Prayer provided with musical notation below… especially the principal parts” (Order of Mass, 32). On this basis alone, the sung Eucharistic Prayer clearly should be within the capabilities of most priests.
Practical Basis: Too Long?
The instruction given in GIRM 38, quoted above, follows an interesting insight that
goal of the liturgy: sanctification, being made holy, signifies that God both heals and transforms the sinner. Sin falsifies who God is when we fail to love him above all things. It falsifies who we are as creatures created to know, love, and serve God. Like a lamp cord pulled from the outlet, sin detaches us from the only source of life and love. Sin, the rejection of life and love, leads to death and despair, “for the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). We can no more save ourselves from sin than a corpse can breathe life back into itself. We stand in need of a savior. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus saves us from sin and eternal death. Salvation from sin is only half the story though. God’s grace not only heals; it elevates. Our sanctification makes us children of God, partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Salvation is not just about avoiding hell, but about sharing in the dynamic self-giving love found in the inner life of the Trinity.
This saving transformation occurs above all in the liturgy. “For it is in the liturgy, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, that ‘the work of our redemption is accomplished’” (CCC, 1068; SC, 2). In the sacraments we are forgiven, nourished, and divinized. Christ applies the fruits of his Passion to us, conforming us ever more closely to his own image.
The glorification of God and the sanctification of man find their unity in the person and work of Christ. On the cross, Jesus offered his perfect obedience, glorifying the Father, and he poured out grace, sanctifying humanity. The Church, his Body, exists to continue this twofold mission. And the Church’s liturgy is the preeminent place where both are achieved: “Christ indeed always associates the Church with Himself in this great work wherein God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified” (SC, 7).
If we lose sight of these central ends of the liturgy, we risk seeing and treating it as just one more human activity—optional, even replaceable. Other goods found in the liturgy, things like fellowship, beauty, and inspiration, can be found in many places, often with greater polish or appeal than at our local parish. But when the liturgy’s true ends are understood, we see why it is essential and irreplaceable. The liturgy provides us something utterly unique: a participation in Christ’s own glorification of the Father and in his work of our redemption. Keeping these ends in view broadens our vision of the liturgy, guarding us from narrowing our focus on our own preferences or on secondary details. Those details no doubt matter, but only as the means to a greater end. The liturgy realizes the very goals of our lives—to glorify the Father, and through the Spirit to be conformed to the image of his Son.
liturgical scholars have gleaned from the historical sources of the liturgy. When these sources use the word “dicere,” they often do not merely express an optionality between speech or song. Instead, they suggest much more of a hybrid between the two—a kind of sung speech that is neither song nor speech, but something that falls somewhere in the middle. This style of recitation is also commonly called cantillation, or a simple form of text recitation in a liturgical context that employs a natural speech rhythm paired with simple, unembellished, and highly intuitive melodic formulas. The melodies for the Eucharistic Prayer are almost entirely in the form of cantillation and should be sung with the rhythm of natural speech and not with any intrusions from modern vocal styles.
What this means in practical terms for the priest celebrant is that chanting the Mass does not require a well-trained singing voice according to modern standards, but merely a good speaking voice and the ability to concentrate the voice’s pitch on a few different notes. When sung this way, there is minimal difference in overall length between a Eucharistic Prayer that is recited with “sung speech” and one that is merely spoken. As a result, the length of a Mass with a sung Eucharistic Prayer does not need to be any longer than one with a Eucharistic Prayer that is spoken.
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When the liturgy’s true ends are understood, we see why it is essential and irreplaceable. The liturgy gives us something utterly unique: a participation in Christ’s
It may be hard to believe that we have only had readily available resources for chanting the Eucharistic Prayer in English since 2011. Now is an excellent time for priests who have not yet learned to sing the Eucharistic Prayer to take some time to learn at least its principal parts, found conveniently in the main body of the Roman Missal.
Continued from READING, page 1
collegiate principle. A tradition of liberal learning was handed down intact “from the Greek sophists to the Latin rhetoricians and grammarians and from these to the monks and clerks of the Middle Ages.”6 The original liberal education of the Greeks and Romans was rooted in a study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the Trivium) in order to form a just estimation of words, the laws of thought, and rules of logic. One learned by studying the most excellent examples—so the Trivium was inextricably a patient and careful study of literature. In the Latin West, the study of grammar and the Latin classics predominated. When the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, a new Christian humanism sprung from twin roots: it grew from Latin grammar and the Latin classics, but also the Latin Fathers, the Bible, and the liturgy. When the Roman Empire fell, and Christian monks discovered the task of re-educating barbarian peoples, they brought the liberal arts with them.7 The Bible was a text, and to read it well one needed to know the rules of language and composition. As Jean Leclercq has pointed out, when Charlemagne began his reforms of the liturgy and monastic life in 780, what resulted was a literary renaissance. A reformed liturgy combated superstition, and precise Latin grammar protected the doctrinal formulations of the Church. To know Latin required a study of the Latin classics and the liberal arts. The ensuing literary renaissance took place within monasteries and produced a distinctive monastic style.8
Read Great Texts as a Monk
Jean Leclercq has described how the monastic style can be distinguished from the later-developing scholastic style. In the scholastic style, the text is treated in impersonal terms.9 The text is investigated by making clear and repeated distinctions. Problems arise and are addressed in succession; questions are posed to the text and the solutions of previous commentators are presented and evaluated. The text has little that is personal—which is its great value as an object for scientific investigation.10
On the other hand, the monastic style is intensely personal.11 The investigation into a text presumes a
“ This Augustinian mode of reading is slow, deliberative, meditative: it is the mastication of a great text, in which it becomes a part of the reader, poses questions to the reader, and ultimately explains the reader to himself.”
personal discourse: a man, speaking in the first person, directly addresses his audience. The teacher presumes a special way of life or a “commitment” from his audience. Not speculative insight, but “savoring and clinging to the truth” is its object. Very personal desires—the love of learning and desire for God—animate this style of study.12
The monastic mode of divine reading (lectio divina) was an active reading in which all the senses were employed. Different from reading today, which is silent and solitary, the monks read aloud and in community. They read with the eyes, the lips, the ears. They read aloud to fix the text in their memory. “To speak, to think, to remember, are the three necessary phases of the same activity.” Monastic reading required “the participation of the whole body and the whole mind.”13
This mode of reading naturally led the monk to the ancient and medieval practice of meditatio or meditation, in which the text was inscribed on the body and soul of the reader.14 For the monks, one did not meditate “in the abstract” or on invisible ideas— meditatio was not Descartes’s practice of radical doubt in “Meditations on First Philosophy.” Rather, one meditated on a text, which meant to read it “and to learn it ‘by heart’ in the fullest sense of the expression, that is, with one’s whole being: with the body, since the mouth pronounced it, with the memory which fixes it, with the intelligence which understands its meaning, and with the will which desires to put it into practice.”15
For the monks of the Middle Ages, the liturgy was “both the stimulus and the outcome” of monastic culture.16 The liturgy formed the monks through their
daily participation within it. In being taught how to see themselves within the texts of Scripture, the monks learned how to turn their knowledge and love of secular literature toward the ends Scripture directed. When the monks composed the hymns, poems, and canticles which ornamented the liturgy, they understood the liturgy to be “the synthesis of all the arts…of the literary techniques, religious reflection,” and of the classical and patristic sources. They combined their learning and devotion into an homage to God.17
This monastic Christian humanism developed in the Middle Ages into a love of learning and desire for God that perfected a particular mode of reading texts. With Sacred Scripture as both the ground and perfection of this mode, the collegiate monastic humanism educated a student not only in how to read texts, but how to allow texts to read the student. Certain texts could only be read well if one not only posed questions to the text, but allowed the text to pose questions back—if one discovered “in and through his or her reading of those texts, that they in turn interpret the reader.”18 This mode of reading great texts found its origin in the liberal arts of the Trivium and thus preceded the liturgy, but the liturgy gave the perfected and completed instance thereof.
Exemplars:
Augustine and Dante
Texts of artful composition that necessitate repeated reading predate the composition of the New Testament and establishment of the liturgy. Platonic dialogues like the Meno and the Republic come immediately to mind, where the dramatic action of the dialogue and the repeated reformulation of key theses require a slow study. And the philosophical schools of the ancient pagan world required their disciples to memorize and recite the docta of their philosophical masters.19 But just as the “seeds of the Word” were scattered among all peoples, waiting to find their unity in Christ,20 so too were the elements of patient and careful reading brought to their proper end within the communal living and learning of the medieval Benedictine monasteries. St. Augustine formally inaugurated the development of this collegiate or monastic mode. His insights about divine illumination and reminiscence provided the
Augustine’s conversion took place through the reading of Scripture, as he is told to tollelege (“take and read”) the letter of St. Paul lying before him. The text revealed Augustine to himself. The Roman orator, who so greatly prided himself on skillful composition and analysis, is himself analyzed and composed by the Word of God.
theological and philosophical grounds for the monks of the Middle Ages to experience the revelatory work of Scripture and the Fathers. He also provided the paradigmatic example of a text reading a man to himself in his Confessions. The Confessions gives meaning to Augustine’s own life by placing it within the sweep of salvation history—in the first two pages of the Confessions, the only words adequate to explain God’s call and Augustine’s conversion are the words of the Psalms and the Gospels. Moreover, Augustine’s conversion took place through the reading of Scripture, as he is told to tolle lege (“take and read”) the letter of St. Paul lying before him. The text revealed Augustine to himself. In other words, the Roman orator, who so greatly prided himself on skillful composition and analysis, is himself analyzed and composed by the Word of God. Scripture provided the grammar by which Augustine was able to read his own life.
“Certain
texts could only be read well if one not only posed questions to the text, but allowed the text to pose questions back.”
If Augustine is the source of this tradition, Dante is its perfected example. Dante stands as the great unification of the scholastic and monastic mode, or the Dominican and Benedictine, or the university and the college. His Divine Comedy presents a world in which its very geography is shaped by Aristotelian moral philosophy, Thomistic theology, ancient scientific astronomy, and the Latin classics. The great Latin poet Virgil leads Dante through a world governed by Thomas’s scholastic synthesis, before Virgil cedes his duties as guide to Beatrice—Dante’s great love—and Bernard of Clairvaux, the Cistercian monk. Most important, all is held together within a narrative fundamentally liturgical and scriptural: Dante enters Hell on Good Friday, escapes from Hell on Easter Sunday, and throughout at the opportune moments appear the canticles and psalms of the liturgy. Just as with Augustine, Dante can only understand the predicament that visits him “in a dark wood” by explaining his own life within the conceptual apparatus of Scripture and the liturgy.
Legacy, Eclipse—and Return
This Augustinian mode of reading is slow, deliberative, meditative: it is the mastication of a great text,21 in which it becomes a part of the reader, poses questions to the reader, and ultimately explains the reader to himself. It can obviously exist outside of the liturgy. But for the medieval monks, the liturgy served both as the ground and perfection of study. It shaped the monks and offered the perfected example for comparison. It complemented the scholastic mode of reading: the Christian humanism of the Benedictines could combine with Dominican rationalism to form a truly liberal education.
Christopher Dawson has explained the transition whereby humanism lost its specifically Christian character and the scholastic scientific project was transformed into a technological and methodological pursuit of mastery over nature: “for more than two centuries [across the 18th and 19th centuries] western civilization has been losing contact with the religious traditions on which it was originally founded and devoting all its energies to the conquest and organization of the world by economic and scientific techniques.”22 For all their efficacy and fruitfulness, the new scientific methods—especially in their application to social affairs—could hardly cognize the lectio divina or the meditatio. In the 1920s, from a sense that something had been lost in this newfound emphasis on progress, utility, and socialization, Great Books programs were inaugurated at Columbia and the University of Chicago. A deep insight animated these Great Books programs: true education demanded more than narrow scientific competency. To be initiated into “the great conversation about great ideas,”23 one had to go back to the old texts of the tradition. But in a desire to capture the breadth of the Great Conversation, an enormous range of texts was presented for reading (the original Great Books of the Western World was published in 54 volumes). One risked confusing quantity of reading with depth of reading. Whenever compromises had to be made, the period most often cut was the very Middle Ages described above. The original 54-volume Great Books devoted only five volumes to the period between the fourth and 14th centuries AD—Augustine, Aquinas (two
volumes), Dante, and Chaucer. The medieval Augustinian monastic mode little resembled “innovative” modern philosophy and was thus excluded. By cutting this period and by reading widely (and necessarily quickly), the new Great Books tradition could easily lose sight of the slow mastication of a text. Even close reading, when divorced from monastic and liturgical insights, could quickly devolve into a method for discovering the esoteric or “hidden” messages of a great text which, for all its apparent similarity, could not be further from placing oneself at the foot of a text to inscribe it onto one’s heart.
It should not be surprising that the places where this Augustinian mode of reading is emphasized—where texts are read together, slowly, in a community, animated by personal loves (that is, the love of learning and desire for God)—are institutions and departments themselves shaped by their members’ participation in the liturgy. One can see this in the short-lived but renowned Integrated Humanities program at the University of Kansas; the Catholic Studies departments encouraged by the writings of Don Briel and the Program of Liberal Studies at Notre Dame; at the University of Tulsa’s honors college when it was led by Jennifer Frey; at Catholic Studies Institutes like Collegium at the University of Pennsylvania, St. Benedict Institute at Hope College, and my home at the Lumen Christi Institute at
the University of Chicago, which has emphasized the formation of communities of intellectual and spiritual friendship.24
None of these institutes or departments teach students to read other great texts as if they were the liturgy. But in being formed by the liturgy, the leadership of these institutes is keenly aware of the humanistic need to “read again,” to patiently open oneself to a text. One goal of these departments and institutes is to remind students of the various ways in which texts can be read, so that students are prepared when they find themselves in the middle of a dark wood; or for that day in which they are told to tolle lege and discover, suddenly, that it is the text that is reading them.
Austin Walker is Associate Director and Scholar-inResidence at the Lumen Christi Institute, an independent institute for Catholic thought at the University of Chicago. He oversees the presentation of the Church’s intellectual tradition on the University of Chicago campus and the wider Chicagoland area. He also leads LCI’s Executive Great Books seminar series and serves as an instructor at the University of Chicago’s Graham School Basic Program of Liberal Education. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, where he wrote on John Henry Newman’s political philosophy. He and his wife have three young children and live on Chicago's South Side. They are parishioners at St. Thomas the Apostle in Hyde Park.
1. Lumen Christi Institute. (2025, August 11). All Things Hold Together: A Great Books Education and the Catholic Tradition [video]: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QlVYpA4tcaU&ab_channel=LumenChristiInstitute
2. Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (South Bend: Notre Dame Press, 1990), 82–104.
3. The liturgy, as the perfected corporate reading and re-reading of the Word of God, “reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling,” to use the words of the Second Vatican Council on the activity of Jesus Christ (Gaudium et Spes, 22).
4. John Henry Newman, “Rise and Progress of Universities,” in Historical Sketches, Vol III (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 228–230. For Newman’s understanding of the liturgy, see in the Adoremus Bulletin “‘The Most Joyful and Blessed Ordinance of the Gospel’: Saint John Henry Newman on the Liturgy” (Nov. 9, 2019) and “The Heart of John Henry Newman: Beating with the Spirit of the Liturgy” (Nov. 11, 2020). In 1991, a collection of Newman’s sermons on the liturgy was published as Sermons, 1824–1843. Vol. 1: Sermons on the Liturgy and Sacraments and on Christ the Mediator, ed. Placid Murray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Within that volume, he preaches that the liturgy “impresses upon our hearts the true image of the Christian character”
(71). Compare infra the power of the Augustinian mode to inscribe a text on a reader’s heart.
5. On the poetic Benedictines and scientific Dominicans, see John Henry Newman, “The Mission of St. Benedict,” in Historical Sketches, Vol II (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906). For a fuller account of Newman’s vision of the college, see Paul Shrimpton’s The ‘Making of Men.’ The Idea and Reality of Newman's University in Oxford and Dublin (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2014), which gathers Newman’s letters, diaries, and written plans for his Dublin university. The college was the home of “personal influence.” For an account of personal influence and the influence of Scripture, see Oxford University Sermon V, “Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth,” in Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 75–98.
6. Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 5.
7. Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, 6–9.
8. Jean Leclercq, O.S.B, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 38–41.
9. Leclercq cites as an instance Peter Lombard’s prologue to his Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul
10. Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 3–4.
11. Leclercq cites Bernard of Clairvaux’s prologue to his Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles. Both the scholastic and monastic modes are commentaries on scripture—it is not the subject matter but the style that distinguishes the two.
12. Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 4.
13. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 16.
14. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 73.
15. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 17.
16. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 236.
17. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 250–251.
18. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 82.
19. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995).
20. References to the doctrine of spermatikoi logoi, or seeds of the Word, begin in the writings of the second-century Justin Martyr and can be found in the writings of many of the Church Fathers. Newman offers a helpful summary of the doctrine in his review of Millman’s Essence of Christianity (Essays Historical and Critical, Vol. II [London: Longman’s], 230–232.): “Now, the phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this:—that great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth, is in its rudiments or in its separate parts to be found in heathen philosophies and religions…. Mr. Milman argues from it,—‘These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:’ we, on the contrary, prefer to say, ‘these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.’ That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; … So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings."
21. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 73.
22. Dawson, Crisis, 129.
23. This was the subtitle of the first volume, written by University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins, in the 54-volume Great Books of the Western World, published originally in 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica.
24. This list only considers departments or para-academic organizations that address the needs of otherwise secular or secularized university campuses. Many worthy organizations are unjustly left unmentioned. Nor does this list include Catholic colleges formed along similar lines, like Wyoming Catholic College, Thomas Aquinas College, et al. Nor does this list include secular colleges that are sensitive to this Augustinian humanism without the explicit influence of the liturgy, like St. John’s College or Hillsdale College.
For the medieval monks, the liturgy served both as the ground and perfection of study. It complemented the scholastic mode of reading: the Christian humanism of the Benedictines could combine with Dominican rationalism to form a truly liberal education.
And the Word Became Flesh: The Worship of God through Icons
By Richard Kaleb Hammond
hou shalt not have strange gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:3–5). This passage, the First Commandment, has been used throughout history as the chief justification for iconoclasm, the destruction of sacred images. However, the magisterial teaching of the early ecumenical councils such as Second Nicaea1 and Fourth Constantinople2—which was reaffirmed repeatedly in history, including at the Council of Trent3—as well as the witness of the Fathers, Doctors, saints, and the popular piety of the faithful, have all consistently attested to the validity and great profit of venerating the icons and relics of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. Thus, to understand the proper role of icons in the liturgical and spiritual life of Catholics today, the First Commandment requires a fuller, more nuanced interpretation in light of the spiritual and sacramental revolution inaugurated by the Incarnation of the Son of God.
Before addressing the issue directly, it is necessary first to define two terms which the Church has developed to help properly understand the role of icons in Christian devotion: latria (Gk. λατρεία) and dulia (Gk. δουλεία). These two terms distinguish what in English is variously called adoration, worship, reverence, or veneration, into two categories of honor: one which applies exclusively to God (latria), and one which can also be applied to the Virgin Mary and the saints (dulia).
Latria and Dulia
The first term, latria, expresses the adoration that is due only to God. As St. John Damascene, one of the foremost patristic defenders of icon veneration, explains in his great work, On Holy Images (early eighth century), “the first kind [of adoration] is the worship of latreia, which we give to God, who alone is adorable by nature, and this worship is shown in several ways, and first by the worship of servants. All created things worship Him, as servants their master. All things serve Thee, the psalm says.”4 Adoration given to God is an act of submission to his supreme excellence and is therefore an act of the virtue of religion, according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
The second type of adoration, dulia, is, strictly speaking, honor given to superiors due to some excellence in them,5 which is a finite participation in God’s divine excellence and a gratuitous sharing in his gifts: “Reverence is due to God on account of His excellence, which is communicated to certain creatures not in equal measure, but according to a measure of proportion; and so the reverence which we pay to God, and which belongs to latria, differs from the reverence which we pay to certain excellent creatures; this belongs to dulia.”6 In this way, while latria may be given to God alone, dulia is permissible for creatures in honor of the gifts God has given them, thereby adoring God through his creatures.
In ordinary Latin Catholic usage, the term “adoration” tends to be associated with the devotion of Eucharistic Adoration, which could cause “adoration” to be understood exclusively in the first sense as latria. However, as we have seen, in its technical sense “adoration” has a wider meaning, encompassing both latria and dulia. The Catholic practice of “praying to” saints (ad-oratio) is one example of this lesser, derivative form of adoration, one which is still always referred to God as the source of every perfection honored in his creatures. Damascene provides a succinct summary of this distinction, showing that Scripture itself clearly distinguishes between latria toward God and dulia given to creatures: “Worship is the symbol of veneration and of honour. Let us understand that there are different degrees of worship. First of all the worship of latreia, which we show to God, who alone by nature is worthy of worship. Then, for the sake of God who is worshipful by nature, we honour His saints and servants, as Josue and Daniel worshipped an angel, and David His holy places, when he says, ‘Let us go to the place where His feet have stood.’ Again, in His tabernacles, as when all the people of Israel adored in the tent, and standing round the temple in Jerusalem, fixing their gaze upon it from all sides, and worshipping from that day to this, or in the rulers established by Him, as Jacob rendered homage to Esau, his elder brother, and to Pharao, the divinely established ruler. Joseph was worshipped by his brothers.”7
St. Thomas also adds that, in other instances, Scripture shows creatures refusing adoration when it
The singular Person of the Son of God is worshiped in both of his natures, as God and as man. This means that even his flesh is worshiped with latria because it is assumed by the Son of God into the unity of Person, so that by adoring his flesh, we adore God.
“Due to human nature as a radical union of body and soul—crowned by the latter’s spiritual powers of intellect and will—adoration naturally includes both
internal reverence and external signs or expressions
of it.”
could be confused as latria: “it was the reverence due to God with which Mardochai refused to adore Aman fearing ‘lest he should transfer the honor of his God to a man’ (Esther 13:14),” and “it was with the reverence due to God that John was forbidden to adore the angel (Revelation 22:9).”8
Body and Soul
Due to human nature as a radical union of body and soul—crowned by the latter’s spiritual powers of intellect and will—adoration naturally includes both internal reverence and external signs or expressions of it: “And since in all acts of latria that which is without is referred to that which is within as being of greater import, it follows that exterior adoration is offered on account of interior adoration, in other words we exhibit signs of humility in our bodies in order to incite our affections to submit to God, since it is connatural to us to proceed from the sensible to the intelligible.”9 Thus, adoration broadly considered employs various bodily gestures which can be given to God (as latria), or to the angels, saints, and even living human superiors (as dulia), including bows, genuflection, prostration, etc. Nevertheless, one act of adoration is proper to God alone: the offering of sacrifice.10 For this reason, Epiphanius of Salamis (ironically, though himself a vehement iconoclast) corrected a heresy of his time (fourth century) called Collyridianism, which idolatrously adored the Virgin Mary with latria by offering ritual sacrifices to her.11
The Incarnation Revolution In the Incarnation, God made it possible for matter to represent him, not only in an indirect way, as all creatures signify and point to their Creator,12 but through the hypostatic unity of Person into which the human nature of Christ was assumed by the
“To understand the proper role of icons in the liturgical and spiritual life of Catholics today, the First Commandment requires a fuller, more nuanced interpretation in light of the spiritual and sacramental revolution inaugurated by the Incarnation of the Son of God.”
Son of God.13 Based on this dogma of the faith, and against a Nestorian “co-veneration” of Christ as two distinct Persons, one divine and one human,14 the First Council of Ephesus15 mandated that a single adoration is to be given to the one Incarnate Word. Later, the fifth ecumenical council, Second Constantinople,16 corrected the opposite Monophysite heresy of a single veneration of Christ’s divine nature alone, “or to an alleged mixed nature,” by adding that Christ “with his own flesh... is the object of the one adoration.”17 In other words, Christ is not worshiped as God but merely honored as man, which would separate him into two different Persons, one for each nature (the error of Nestorius). Rather, the singular Person of the Son of God is worshiped in both of his natures, as God and as man. This means that even his flesh is worshiped with latria because it is assumed by the Son of God into the unity of Person, so that by adoring his flesh, we adore God.
To clarify further, tradition identifies two ways a person may be honored: absolutely in himself, and relatively through some object directed or referred to him.18 Accordingly, in Christian devotion, the subsistent Person is the formal object of absolute latria when honor is paid to his individual parts, as with the devotion to the Sacred Heart.19 He is the formal object of relative latria when honor is paid to things that especially “belong” to him, such as the True Cross and Crown of Thorns which were “saturated” with his blood, as St. Thomas poignantly notes.20 He is also the object of relative latria in artistic representations of his belongings, such as crucifixes and icons portraying him.
God Worshiped through Icons
This leads us to consider more directly the original thesis of this article: even in light of the First Commandment, God may be legitimately adored through icons, particularly in the context of the Mass. To explain, St. Thomas distinguishes two movements which the mind may have toward an image: to the image itself as a material object, and to that of which it is an image, i.e. the thing represented.21 In the veneration of icons depicting Christ, these images may be given the adoration of relative latria, both through internal reverence and external gestures of honor, because such adoration is directed not to the images themselves, as in pagan superstition, or to the demonic deities depicted in pagan idols, but to the true God whom they represent,22 just as Christ could be adored even in the hem of his cloak (Mark 6:56). To use St. Basil’s famous phrase as quoted by Damascene, “Honoring the image leads to the prototype.”23 This worship of the invisible God through icons was not permitted before the Incarnation, but now, “because in the New Testament God was made man, He can be adored in His corporeal image.”24
Hence Damascene wrote, “When the Invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you may then draw a likeness of His form. When He who is a pure spirit, without form or limit, immeasurable in the boundlessness of His own nature, existing as God, takes upon Himself the form of a servant in substance and in stature, and a body of flesh, then you may draw His likeness, and show it to anyone willing to contemplate it.... Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honouring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God.”25
Saints in Icons and Relics
Adoration of latria may be given to Christ’s humanity absolutely since it is united to his Person, or it may be given to his relics, icons, and representations relatively.
However, it may not be paid to the Virgin Mary, who, like the angels and saints,26 may only be adored with dulia. This is because, although she was even more intimately connected to Christ than his Cross was, she is not an inanimate object representing a person, but a person herself; since she is not God, the honor given to her may only be dulia 27 Nevertheless, St. Thomas notes that, since she is the Mother of God and the greatest of all creatures after Christ’s humanity, she deserves the special reverence of hyperdulia 28 In continuity with the uninterrupted Tradition of the Church, the veneration of icons, in all their artistic forms, should be a part of the spiritual and liturgical life of every Christian. For Latin Catholics today, veneration of icons may seem to be a peculiarly Eastern Catholic or Orthodox practice, especially with their elaborate iconostases (icon screens) and the frescoes covering their churches. On the other hand, many of our churches in the West, especially those built in recent decades, tend to be sparsely adorned with holy icons, if at all, and many newer examples of sacred art are not sufficiently “marked by beauty” as the Church calls for in order to inspire our devotion.29 Nevertheless, Latin Catholics can rediscover this ancient practice. At Mass, the Eucharist, far exceeding all icons, deserves our absolute latria because, as
the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, it is intrinsically united to his Person. Moreover, since the Eucharist is a re-presentation by the priest, acting in persona Christi, of the one sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, it may be offered as worship to God alone. Outward bodily signs such as the traditional postures of ad orientem and the faithful kneeling to receive Communion fittingly signify this reality. The celebration of the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday is also a special opportunity to give the adoration of latria to Christ, relatively through the Cross which we adore.
Beyond this, however, we can also adore Christ with relative latria in the statues, frescoes, mosaics, or icons of him on the walls or stained-glass windows of our churches. Further, we can let ourselves be reminded that the Mass is our earthly participation in the heavenly liturgy by giving adoration of dulia to the
“At Mass, the Eucharist, far exceeding all icons, deserves our absolute latria because, as the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, it is intrinsically united to his Person.”
icons of Our Lady and the angels and saints available to us. But if we really want icons to achieve their full spiritual potential for us, our families, our Church, and our society in general, we should learn from the East and bring icons home with us, setting up a home altar or icon corner as our medieval Latin forebears did, wearing religious jewelry or clothing to share our faith with others, and promoting sacred art with our time, talent, and treasure. In this way, icons may serve the Church’s call for the Via Pulchritudinis—the Way of Beauty—to reclaim our culture for Christ and lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of his mercy.30
Kaleb Hammond holds a B.A. in English and Theology from Holy Apostles College & Seminary, Cromwell, CT, where he is now pursuing an M.A. in Theology. He is a writer for Missio Dei, operates his personal Substack blog, Saint Tolkien, and has been published at Homiletic & Pastoral Review and Catholic Insight, with forthcoming articles accepted by St. Austin Review and New Oxford Review. A convert to the faith, he grew up in Georgia and now lives in Indiana with his family.
1. Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum [DH], ed. Peter Hünermann (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012), §600-603, 605.
2. DH 653-656.
3. DH 1821-1825.
4. John of Damascus, “On Images,” in Saint John of Damascus Collection, trans. Mary H. Allies (Aeterna Press, 2014), loc 7846. Kindle.
5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 103, a. 4.
6. ST, II-II, q. 84, a. 1.
7. John of Damascus, “On Images,” loc 7153.
8. ST, II-II, q. 84, a. 1, ad 1.
9. ST, II-II, q. 84, a. 2.
10. ST, II-II, q. 84, a. 1. 11. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christ the Savior, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1950), 522.
12. John of Damascus, “On Images,” loc 7138.
13. ST, III, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2.
14. ST, III, q. 17, a. 1. 15. DH 259.
16. DH 430.
17. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (London: Baronius Press, 2018), 170-171.
18. Edward Pace, “Dulia,” in Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Kevin Knight, vol. 5 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909), at www.newadvent.org.
19. Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 172-173.
20. ST, III, q. 25, a. 4, ad 3.
21. ST, III, q. 25, a. 3.
22. ST, III, q. 25, a. 3, ad 2.
23. John of Damascus, “On Images,” loc 7235.
24. ST, III, q. 25, a. 3, ad 1.
25. John of Damascus, “On Images,” loc 7116, 7167-7175.
26. ST, III, q. 25, aa. 5-6.
27. ST, III, q. 25, a. 5, ad 3.
28. ST, III, q. 25, a. 5. 29. Pope Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life and Mission, Sacramentum Caritatis (22 February 2007), 41.
30. Cf. Pontifical Council for Culture, Concluding Document of the Plenary Assembly Via pulchritudinis, Privileged Pathway for Evangelisation and Dialogue (2006).
St. Thomas notes that, since she is the Mother of God and the greatest of all creatures after Christ’s humanity, Mary deserves the special reverence of hyperdulia
The celebration of the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday is a special opportunity to give the adoration of latria to Christ, though only relatively through the Cross which we adore.
St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde: Liturgical Mystics
By Kevin D. Magas
Prominent 20th-century liturgical historians have tended to treat the Medieval period as one of liturgical deformation and dissolution, where the once vibrant liturgy of the Patristic era became obscured by an increasingly individualistic and subjective piety. In this narrative, the veil of Latin rendered non-clerical participants as marginalized spectators who were often more preoccupied with the inner life and visions at the expense of communal liturgical practices. Theodor Klauser, for example, argued that the liturgy degenerated from the common act of priest and people to “now exclusively a priestly duty;” the “people were still present, but they devoted themselves during the sacred action to non-liturgical, subjective, pious exercises.”1 While there is a kernel of truth in these claims, such sweeping generalizations do not fully account for the diverse and complex reality of medieval worship. A growing body of scholarly research has challenged these caricatures by highlighting that medieval men and women, both religious and lay, creatively and actively engaged with the liturgical action and were concerned with communal practices beyond the confines of subjective piety.2
Perhaps the most prominent among these examples of the medieval integration of private devotion and a liturgical spirituality come from the Benedictine monastic community at Helfta, Germany, home to a flowering of 13th-century mysticism associated primarily with the names of Gertrude the Great of Helfta (1256–1302) and Mechtilde of Hackeborn (1240/1241–1298). While one would naturally expect the work of medieval monastics to reflect the daily round of lectio divina, Mass, and the Divine Office, the visions, ecstasies, and spiritual teachings of the Helfta nuns have consistently been called more “overtly liturgical,”3 even leading some scholars to label them as “liturgical mystics.”4 The Helfta literature overflows with accounts of visions occurring during Mass and the Office, visions which are themselves profoundly saturated with the language of the liturgy. Cyprian Vagaggini notes that the very first thing which strikes even a superficial reader of Gertrude’s writings is that “the liturgical vision of the world really constitutes in her the primary and unifying form of her way of living in depth the life of the spirit.”5 The liturgical actions of “Mass and Communion, of the canonical hours, of the feasts, of the liturgical times, constitutes the psychological frame, not only external but internal as well, of attention, of desire, of love, in the coordination of which her life unfolds as a search for God, as fruitful union with Him, and as a return to men in order to lead them to God.”6
Piety in Practice
While the nuns of Helfta are typically associated with accounts of mystical ecstasies, it is worth remembering that not all the Helfta literature focuses exclusively on visions. Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises present a series of private prayers, devotions, and litanies that are not substitutes for liturgical participation, but forms of piety inspired by and infused with scripture and the liturgy. Not only does the text frequently cite collects, antiphons, responsories, prefaces, etc. from the Mass and Office, but the reader is struck by the very “liturgical” structuring of the text: the first exercise is freely based on the liturgical rites of initiation comprising Baptism, Confirmation, and Communion; the second, third, and fourth exercises highlight the milestones in a woman monastic’s life through a renewal of the rituals of clothing, consecration, and profession; and exercises five through seven have the Divine Office as their liturgical background, containing meditations for preparing for death and increasing devotion to divine love and thanksgiving to God, all structured around the seven canonical hours.7
Perhaps the most theologically profound is the first exercise centered on the rites of initiation which focuses on the theme of rebirth and ties into the liturgical year: “To be in the condition, at the end of your life, of presenting to the Lord the spotless garment of your baptismal innocence and the whole and undefiled seal of your Christian faith, be zealous at certain times, especially at Pasch and at Pentecost, in celebrating the memory of your baptism. Accordingly, desire to be reborn in God through the holiness of new life and to be restored to a new infancy….”8
To do this, Gertrude invites her readers to envisage an actual baptismal ceremony, leading them with meditations through the ritual words and actions of different stages of the liturgy. These include devotions
and litanies after reading the Creed, saying the formula of the exorcism, signing oneself with the sign of the cross, tasting the salt of wisdom, laying on of hands (by Jesus instead of the priest), receiving Mary as godmother, being immersed in the baptismal fountain, etc. The meditations end with beautiful prayers for Communion that highlight the life-giving power of the sacrament, showing that the Eucharist too is a sacrament of re-birth.9
Visionary Commentaries
While we may tend to oppose objective liturgical piety to subjective mystical experience, the liturgical language and content of the Helfta visions reveal this as a false dichotomy. Medieval historian Jean Leclerq notes that since the “revelations” always occur at liturgical places, times, and contexts, the nuns use the words of the liturgy “naturally, normally, easily, spontaneously,” drawing on the “very expressions of the liturgy” to express their “own personal prayer in the language of the official, public prayer;” hence their inner piety “vivifies” their liturgical office just as their liturgical life “nourishes” their personal piety.10 At the center of Gertrude’s Herald of Divine Love and Mechtilde’s Book of Special Grace are lengthy narratives explicitly and systematically structured according to the course of the liturgical year, such that they can even be considered “visionary commentaries on the mystical significance of the annual liturgical cycle.”11
For instance, Gertrude’s visions during the Christmas and Candlemas liturgies emphasize the spiritual meaning of the season as the birth of Christ in the soul by means of a progressive divinization and transformation in Christ.12 In a vision on Christmas, Gertrude meditates on this truth as she is changed into the same color as the divine child: “And while
“The liturgical vision of the world really constitutes in St. Gertrude the primary and unifying form of her way of living in depth the life of the spirit.”
I held him within my soul, suddenly I saw myself entirely transformed into the color of the heavenly babe…. I rejoiced that I was not denied the welcome presence and delightful caresses of my Spouse…. I drank in, like deep draughts from a cup of nectar, divinely inspired words such as these: ‘As I am the figure of the substance of the Father (Heb. 1:3) through my divine nature, in the same way, you shall
be the figure of my substance through my human nature, receiving in your deified soul the brightness of my divinity, as the air receives the sun’s rays and, penetrated to the very marrow by this unifying light, you will become capable of an ever closer union with me.’”13
Mechtilde offers a beautiful pre-Lenten meditation on the spiritual journey of the soul which the Christian will undertake in the coming Lenten season, in response to Christ’s invitation on Quinquagesima to dwell on a mountain with him for 40 days and nights. Mechtilde travels through different plateaus of the mountain, describing the heavenly gathering as she ascends toward the summit: “all the angels and saints surrounded the mountain, chanting in unison with God the sweet healing prayer of love. The chant was so sweet, the modulation so gentle, that no human tongue would be able to repeat it.”14 At the top of the mountain, images of a royal feast and celestial banquet occur as “The Son of the Virgin came [himself] to offer for them a delicious food, that is to say, his adorable body, bread of life and of salvation…. He also offers the chalice filled with pure wine, that is to say, the blood of the immaculate lamb, who purifies the heart from all defilement. The Lord said: ‘Now I have given to your soul with all its goodness, what I am…you in me and I in you; you will never be separated from me.’”15
Mechtilde’s reception of the Eucharist, the very “summit” of our faith, at the mountain’s summit in the midst of the throne of the Holy Trinity and heavenly hosts and choirs of angels, highlights the interwoven present, eschatological, and cosmic dimensions of the Eucharistic mystery.16 By highlighting the Eucharistic and eschatological culmination of the spiritual journey, Mechtilde reveals the mystical meaning of the Lenten season not just as preparation for Easter but as the gradual unfolding of the mystery of redemption in the soul.
“While we may tend to oppose objective liturgical piety to subjective mystical experience, the liturgical language and content of the Helfta visions reveal this as a false dichotomy.”
Immersed in the Liturgy
Uwe Michael Lang has recently drawn attention to the fact that “active” participation in the medieval liturgy was not predominantly textual, but a “synesthetic experience” facilitated through immersion in the sensory dimensions of the liturgy (seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting).17 Medieval scholar Anna Harrison finds this exemplified in the visions of Gertrude and Mechtilde, who emerge as “lively and engaged participants in the liturgy, sensitive to the intricacy of the individual components that comprised each [liturgical] observance: The physical objects Mechtild and Gertrude saw and touched, the words they chanted and to which they listened, seeped into their imagination, giving rise to and becoming the stuff of visions, suffusing communal song, reception, or a gospel reading with tangled layers of meaning, charging everyday routine with sometimes exalted, sometimes elaborate, and often weighty intellectual meaning, as well as deeply personal significance.”18
For instance, Gertrude enlisted the help of a fellow nun to pray a certain prayer before a crucifix that she might be pierced with the arrow of love from Christ’s wounded heart, and her petition only becomes activated in a vision during Mass: “Certain signs… now appeared on the picture of your crucifixion. After I had received the life-giving Sacrament, on returning to my place, it seemed to me as if, on the right side of the Crucified painted in the book, that is to say, on the wound in the side, a ray of sunlight with a sharp point like an arrow came forth, and spread itself out for a moment and then drew back. It continued like this for a while and affected me gently but deeply.”19
In addition to devotional objects in a liturgical context inducing visions, many commentators have drawn attention to the indispensable role of the musical context and imagery underlying the Helfta visions. After all, many of their visions take place during chants (antiphons, sequences, Glorias, Alleluias) or even during the individual words or syllables within single chants, and tend to follow
The Helfta literature overflows with accounts of visions occurring during Mass and the Office, visions which are themselves profoundly saturated with the language of the liturgy.
the same standard formula: “During (matins/mass/ vespers) one day in (week/feast) x, when (responsory/ antiphon/sequence) y was being sung….” The texts then relate what Mechtilde or Gertrude saw, heard, tasted, or felt during the liturgical chant or hour.20 During the singing of an antiphon commemorating the death of a former Abbess, Mechtilde envisions a choir of souls encircling Christ and singing a hymn to the Virgin, as a “great trumpet” (tuba magna) emerges from Christ’s heart and harmoniously blends all of their voices together into a beautiful melody.21 In one case, Gertrude visualizes God the Father as a musician playing on the instrument of his Son for her sake, and in another, she sees Christ as a harpist within her who reveals a musical pipe, a fistula, coming out of the wound in his side to beckon her to union: “During the infinitely sweet delight which this caused her, she felt herself to be drawn in an indescribable way, through the pipe we have mentioned, into the heart of the Lord, and she had the happiness of finding herself within the very being of her spouse and lord. What she felt, saw, heard, tasted, touched, is known to her alone, and to him who deigned to admit her to such a union.”22
Visions of Community
Far from being privatized, individualistic experiences, the Helfta visionaries allowed the spirituality of corporate liturgical worship to permeate into the collaborative composition of their works, as many nuns in the community cooperated in redacting the visions in The Herald of Divine Love and The Book of Divine Grace.23 Ultimately, the visions were not ends in themselves or the result of a reflexive selfpreoccupation with psychological states, but served for the edification of the monastic community and the spiritual experiences of others. On one occasion the Lord left Gertrude the choice of being illuminated in a superior and profound way, beyond discursive concepts and images but incommunicable to others, or in a lesser but communicable way; she preferred the latter because it would be more spiritually enriching to others: “…so that those who will read them may take delight in the sweetness of Your mercy and thus attracted, they may have greater experiences of Your intimacy. Students learn the alphabet first, but finally arrive even at the study of logic; and in this same way, may they through the portrayal of these images, be led to taste in themselves that hidden manna which cannot be accurately described through any combination of corporeal images and which becomes the sole desire of him who has once tasted of it.”24
The study of liturgy is not only a matter of texts and the contexts that shape them. It is also the actualization of tradition in the here and now, as sources are received and appropriated to respond to the needs of each new Christian era. Many of the pioneers of the 19th- and 20th-century Liturgical Movement and monastic renewal were keenly interested in a retrieval of the liturgical piety of the Helfta nuns. The Liturgical Movement sought to restore the liturgy to its rightful place as the indispensable heart of Christian spirituality, and reformers grappled with ways to reconcile the spread of popular extra-liturgical devotions with a renewed emphasis on the communal, objective prayer of the liturgy. These theologians and reformers, in their retrieval of sources of the medieval period, found in the school of Helfta an example of how a life of mystical contemplation and devotional practices could be harmonized with a life structured by the liturgy and anchored in its firm dogmatic foundations.
As we have seen throughout our brief survey of
even the most personal, subjective, and
Mechtilde’s reception of the Eucharist, the very summit of our faith, at the mountain’s summit in the midst of the throne of the Holy Trinity and heavenly hosts and choirs of angels highlights the interwoven present, eschatological, and cosmic dimensions of the Eucharistic mystery.
“There are few examples of a more happy marriage of an intense devotion to the liturgy and a mystic life of the highest order than the spirituality of St. Gertrude.”
interior forms of devotion were always oriented towards the spiritual growth of others and their personal interiorization of the mystical meaning of liturgical time, feast, and season. Prosper Guéranger, often referred to as the very “father” of the Liturgical Movement, translated Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises in order to open up their riches and allow their focus on the essential foundations of scripture, the Divine Office, and lectio divina to guide the rejuvenation of Benedictine life at Solesmes.25 Other classical works of the Liturgical Movement, such as Louis Bouyer’s Liturgical Piety and Cyprian Vagaggini’s Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy describe how Gertrude and Mechtilde were originators of many later devotions, such as devotion to the Sacred Heart, but find their formulation of the devotion structured by and in tune with the liturgical mystery. Indeed, it was spoken of Gertrude by her confidantes that she always sought that her “devotion might be in harmony with the liturgy.”26 For example, instead of emotional, sentimental understandings which later attach themselves to the Sacred Heart devotion, Bouyer sees the Helfta visions as “motivated by an authentic sense of that deep unity of all Christianity in the unity of the Mystery itself as being, finally, the revelation of divine love,” and therefore an example of how modern devotions could be rethought “along the lines of the liturgy.”27
Spirituality of the Liturgy
Both Vagaggini and Benedictine monk Anselm Stolz find in the nuns of Helfta an articulation of the
universal call to the mystical life as the unfolding of baptismal grace, a life which is “entirely at ease in being born, in developing, and in maturing within the framework of a liturgical spirituality.”28 This quality pushed back against some concerns in the school of Carmelite spirituality that a spirituality based on the liturgical action is too distracting or even counterproductive to the preparation and development of the mystical life; but, instead of being a “second rank” spirituality good for only novices, Gertrude shows that a spirituality based on the liturgy “furnishes the Christian life with a complete framework which assimilates to itself and orders within itself all the elements needed to lead one who follows it to the highest perfection.”29 A number of articles in Orate Fratres, the flagship journal of the American Liturgical Movement, also emphasize the mutually enriching relationship between personal meditation and liturgical celebration visible in the writings of Helfta. Hilda Graef concludes that, “our age likes to specialize and separate things, and even the spiritual life has not escaped this tendency. There are those who, enamored of a one-sided interpretation of John of the Cross, cry ‘nada, nada, nada’—nothing, neither religious art nor music, complete detachment from all sensible beauty and the nakedness of the spirit alone…. And there are others, who would deprecate all solitary mental prayer and restrict salvation to corporate worship…. There are few examples of a more happy marriage of an intense devotion to the liturgy and a mystic life of the highest order than the spirituality of St. Gertrude.”30 While those involved with the Liturgical Movement and 20th century ressourcement are sometimes criticized for an exclusive focus on the normativity of the liturgical sources of the Patristic era, attention to the medieval piety of Helfta stands out as a notable exception.
Vital Testament
Although 20th-century liturgical scholars often portrayed the Middle Ages as a liturgical autumn, Uwe Michael Lang reminds us that “elements of decline and vitality existed side by side.”31 The liturgical mysticism of the nuns of Helfta is surely a prominent testament to such vitality. The sacramental quality of their visions makes use of the full range of the human imagination, engaging with sensory language, ritual actions, scriptural imagery and tropes, liturgical texts, and the arts. They remain a model of how the public, universal liturgy can become assimilated in the spiritual lives of believers and truly made their own. David Fagerberg has argued that the heart of true liturgical mysticism lies not in extraordinary psychological phenomena but the realization in experience of the mystery of Christ becoming our mystery through the liturgy.32 It is this experience of the liturgy as ultimately the mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) that Bouyer believes Gertrude “will enable us to make our own through what the Second Vatican Council described as ‘an actual and personal participation’ in the prayer, the ‘service,’ of the whole church.”33
Pope Benedict XVI, who devoted two Wednesday General Audiences in 2010 to Gertrude and Mechtilde, finds in the lives of these saints “a strong invitation to us to intensify our friendship with the Lord, especially through daily prayer and attentive, faithful and active participation in Holy Mass,” and a reminder that “the Liturgy is a great school of spirituality.”34 These are words of encouragement to those today who seek the revitalization of a sacramental imagination, convinced like Gertrude and Mechtilde that we participate in the unseen and spiritual through liturgical sign and symbol because “in the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 8).
Kevin D. Magas is an associate professor of sacramental and liturgical theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, IL. He holds an M.T.S. and Ph.D. in theology from the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in liturgical studies. He is a former Department Chair of Theology and Ministry at Holy Family College, Manitowoc, WI, and a past director of Mundelein’s Liturgical Institute. Research interests include modern liturgical history, especially the 19th and 20th century Liturgical Movements, biblical and patristic ressourcement, and liturgical theology. His articles and reviews have appeared in Worship, Antiphon, Adoremus Bulletin, and Chicago Studies, where he is also a member of the editorial board. He is a member of Societas Liturgica, the Academy of Catholic Theology, and the Society for Catholic Liturgy, where he has served as a member of the board of directors.
Helfta piety,
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Gertrude present a series of private prayers, devotions, and litanies that are not substitutes for liturgical participation, but forms of piety inspired by and infused with scripture and the liturgy. AB/PICRYL.COM
AB/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Historical Basis
Liturgical scholars (such as Jungmann, Mazza, and Schmemann) tend to agree that prior to the 10th century, a form of the sung Eucharistic Prayer was commonly in use in the Mass of the Roman Rite, after which a silent recitation of the Canon (submissa voce) became the norm. Many of the Eastern rites, however, have retained the sung Eucharistic Prayer which remains a common practice in many Eastern liturgies today. The prominence of the silent Canon in the history of the Western Church—bookended by the sung Preface and Sanctus at the beginning and the sung Per ipsum and Pater noster at the end in a Solemn High Mass—may make a fully sung Eucharistic Prayer seem a bit excessive. The restoration of the pre-10th century practice of an audible Canon, though, requires it in order to achieve a fully sung form of Mass.
While we have very little to tell us what the sung Eucharistic Prayer might have sounded like prior to the introduction of the silent Canon, we can safely assume that it followed the simple cantillation form used also for other parts of the Order of Mass which have been transmitted to us over the centuries, similar to common practice in the Eastern rites. Its re-introduction, then, required an application of the Solemn Tone of the Order of Mass in addition to adaptations from portions of the Te Deum chant.
The chants for the full Eucharistic Prayers were first published in Ordo Missae in Cantu by the monastery of Solesmes in 1975, were officially incorporated into the 2002 Missale Romanum, and were subsequently adapted and included in the 2011 English translation of the Roman Missal. It may be hard to believe, but we have only had readily available resources for chanting the Eucharistic Prayer in English since 2011. Now is an excellent time for priests who have not yet learned to sing the Eucharistic Prayer to take some time to learn at least its principal parts, found conveniently in the main body of the Roman Missal.
Participatory Basis
The 1967 Instruction on Music in the Liturgy, Musicam Sacram, offers an excellent response to the objection that a sung Eucharistic Prayer might cause the faithful to lose attention or interest during the most important part of the Mass. To the contrary, the postconciliar instruction on sacred music offers these reasons for why the sung form of celebration is preferred above the spoken form: “Indeed, through this form, prayer is expressed in a more attractive way, the mystery of the liturgy, with its hierarchical and community nature, is more openly shown, the unity of hearts is more profoundly achieved by the union of voices, minds are more easily raised to heavenly things by the beauty of the sacred rites, and the whole celebration more clearly prefigures that heavenly liturgy which is enacted in the holy city of Jerusalem. Pastors of souls will therefore do all they can to achieve this form of celebration” (5).
When executed well, the sung Eucharistic Prayer has the power to make the words more beautiful, drawing and attracting the hearer more powerfully toward the truths and realities that they convey. Beauty elevates our minds to the things of heaven,
while conversational speech tends to draw us down to the mundane and ordinary things of the world. But a beautifully sung Eucharistic Prayer, as Musicam Sacram suggests, has the power to make this most sublime prayer, one that actually unites the earthly liturgy with the liturgy of the Heavenly Jerusalem, more clearly expressive of that invisible reality to those who hear it. In a time like our own, when we are used to being the subjects of an ever-pressing worldly demand for attention, a solemnly sung liturgy can much more powerfully draw us out of the noise and distractions of our world and into a contemplative gaze upon the things of heaven.
“When
executed well, the sung
Eucharistic Prayer has the power to make the words more beautiful, drawing and attracting the hearer more powerfully toward the truths and realities that they convey.”
The Crux of the Matter: Sing it Well
The final objection that is often given to singing the Eucharistic Prayer is probably the most consequential in practice. In order for it to achieve all of its potential, as Musicam Sacram describes, the Eucharistic Prayer must be sung well. It must be properly learned, well prepared, and well executed. It is true that seminary formation for decades did not emphasize teaching priests-in-training to sing the Mass. It is also true that we have lacked the practical resources, such as a Roman Missal with all of the needed melodies, to make this training feasible in many cases.
Fortunately for us now, we have the internet. Abundant practice videos on YouTube and resources like the Source & Summit Digital Platform give priests previously unimaginable support in achieving beautiful sung liturgies on the parish level. [Editor’s Note: visit the online version of this article at Adoremus.org for links to the resources mentioned by the author.]
For many priests who did not receive training in singing the Eucharistic Prayers of the 2011 Roman Missal while in seminary, it can be tempting just to “wing it,” using whatever might work best and seem most achievable at the moment. After all, “no one would know the difference anyway,” some might say. That would be a mistake, though. The melodies given in the Roman Missal should be thoroughly learned so that our sung liturgies express the unity of the Roman Rite and not the idiosyncrasies of any given priest celebrant. Just as vestments serve to make the person of the priest transparent, so too does the musical vesture of his chant make his voice transparent and more expressive of the voice of Christ who prays through the priest to the Father in heaven.
Practical Guide
Here are some practical tips for learning how to
sing the Eucharistic Prayer well, along with some suggestions for introducing it into your parish context for the first time.
• Remember that chant is “sung speech.” It should not be theatrical or overly expressive in any way. It should tend toward the rhythm and expression of good speech far more than operatic or more theatrical singing styles. Similarly, for those who lack formal vocal training, emphasizing the rhythm and expression of speech should be the starting point. Matching and maintaining pitch is crucial, and anyone who might struggle with this could consult his music leader for some assistance. However, since every priest can speak, he is more than halfway to chanting well.
• Pay attention to phrasing. Rather than seeing pages of endless notes, focus on the bigger picture: the overall structure of the Eucharistic Prayer, the larger sections, the cadences, etc. The melodic formulas are very simple and predictable, making it less important to try to look at every note, and more helpful to glance at the notes while focusing primarily on the meaning and structure of the text.
• Prioritize the Institution Narrative. These are obviously the most important words of the Eucharistic Prayer, and they also are given special melodic treatment in the melodies of the Roman Missal. Be sure that they can be sung well and confidently above all else.
• Begin with the Simple Tone. The Roman Missal offers both Simple and Solemn Tone options for Eucharistic Prayer I (the Roman Canon). For those who lack training in singing, the Simple Tone should be mastered before moving on to the Solemn Tone. Even for those with more singing experience, beginning with the Simple Tone could still be a wise choice. Part of the priest’s success in chanting the Eucharistic Prayer is endurance and consistency from beginning to end, and focusing on simplicity at first is likely to help foster practical success.
• Introduce gradually. At first, if needed, consider singing the Eucharistic Prayer only through the Mystery of Faith, and then recite the rest of the Prayer before resuming the singing with the Doxology and Amen. Also, be sure to use the melodies found in the Roman Missal for the Mystery of Faith and Amen when chanting the Eucharistic Prayer—these melodies were designed to be used together, and they flow one into the next in a seamless way. Parishioners are often shocked to find that what usually feels like a musical interruption can become a seamless part of a single, solemn sung prayer.
• Make use of Progressive Solemnity. Consider introducing the sung Eucharistic Prayer first at Christmas Midnight Mass, or perhaps on Holy Thursday or Pentecost. Do not necessarily limit it to the greatest solemnities, though, once it is introduced and established. Consider working toward a sung Eucharistic Prayer at the principal Masses of the principal seasons of the year, or even at the principal Mass every Sunday once a practice of sung liturgy has firmly taken root.
Small Steps, Great Reward
While the fully sung liturgy with a sung Eucharistic Prayer alongside a fully sung Order, Ordinary, and Proper of the Mass may seem like a remote and distant reality for many parishes, this should not discourage us from taking small steps toward realizing it more fully over time. Unlike the hard and fast distinction between sung and spoken Masses of times past, the implementation of the sung liturgy by degrees as modeled in Musicam Sacram is an immense gift to the Church that we can use gradually, pastorally, and prudently in any context.
Pastors who may feel somewhat helpless and hopeless about the state of their parish music programs can take solace in the fact that the principal song of the liturgy only requires their voice—well practiced and prepared—and the voices of a few members of the faithful in the pews, and nothing more. Singing the Order of Mass, highlighted by a sung Eucharistic Prayer, can have a profound gravitational effect on a parish’s musical culture. And with a little dedication, study, and effort, it can be done by any priest in any parish.
Adam Bartlett is the founder and CEO of Source & Summit and publisher of the Source & Summit Missal and Digital Platform. Active as a composer of English chant, writer, and workshop presenter, he previously served as a parish and cathedral music director, as Assistant Director of the Liturgical Institute and an adjunct faculty member at Mundelein Seminary, and as a music consultant for ICEL. He resides in Grand Rapids, MI, with his wife and three children.
A beautifully sung Eucharistic Prayer has the power to make this most sublime prayer, one that actually unites the earthly liturgy with the liturgy of the Heavenly Jerusalem, more clearly expressive of that invisible reality to those who hear it.
AB/LAWRENCE LEW ON FLICKR.COM
Continued from SING, page 3
Q: What information is usually recorded in the baptismal register?
A: Canon Law specifies that the baptismal register should include the full name of the person baptized, his or her place and date of birth, the place and date of baptism, and the names of the minister of baptism, the parents, the sponsors, and any witnesses (Can. 877, §1).
Q: What are the special instructions for registering baptisms of adopted children?
A: In 1998, the U.S. bishops approved norms to clarify how baptisms of adopted children are to be recorded in parish registers. These norms function as complementary legislation for canon 877, §3 of the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Rite dioceses of the United States. The Congregation for Bishops granted recognitio to this legislation in 2000, and the decree took effect on December 1 of that year.
The norms take into account two factors. First, maintaining detailed sacramental records is of great importance in the life of the Church and for the pastoral care of each individual. Second, families choose how and when to disclose the fact of adoption in various ways, and it is not the place of the Church to needlessly divulge such information. These instructions balance the integrity of sacramental records with proper confidentiality regarding adoption.
The bishops decreed that, for children baptized after their adoption is finalized, the baptismal register should contain:
• the child’s Christian name as chosen by the adoptive parents
• the names of the adoptive parents
• date and place of birth
• sponsors’ names
• date and place of baptism
• the minister’s name
• “the fact of adoption but not the names of the natural parents.”
The decree further specifies: “Baptismal certificates issued by the parish for adopted children will be no different from other baptismal certificates. No mention of the fact of adoption shall be made on the baptismal certificate.”
For children baptized before their adoption is finalized, certain notations are required once the adoption is legally recognized. In the register:
• parentheses are placed around the names of the natural parents
• the adoptive parents’ names are added
• the child’s former surname is parenthesized and the new surname inserted
• a notation is made that the child was legally adopted
In these cases, baptismal certificates are even more carefully worded. They should list only the adoptive parents, the child’s new legal surname, the date and place of baptism, and the name of the minister. The certificate is not to include the name(s) of the sponsor(s) nor the mention of the fact of adoption.
For pastoral convenience, the bishops also allowed that “a baptismal entry for the adopted child can be made in the baptismal register of the adoptive parents’ parish citing the date and location of the
Exploring the Source and Summit will be taught by Adoremus Director, Christopher Carstens, and will explore the life-changing encounter that we are invited to have with Christ in the Eucharist and how we can further enrich our devotion to the Lord and his profound self-gift in the liturgy. This survey of the scriptural and historical development of the Sacrament of the Eucharist will help orient us to a deeper and mystagogical encounter with the Eucharistic Christ in the prayer of the Mass. Adoremus readers will receive a 25% discount and can take the course for $150. Apply at the Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation and enter the discount code ADOREMUS to waive the application fee.
original baptismal record.” This record lists only the names of the adoptive parents, and the date and place of birth. This helps preserve access to sacramental documentation without disclosing sensitive details. Finally, the decree underscores confidentiality: “Parish personnel having access to parish registers have an obligation not to disclose to any person any information which would identify or reveal, directly or indirectly, the fact that a person was adopted.”
—Answered by the Editors
Q: When can Confession be heard?
A: The Church, in her loving care for the faithful, desires that everyone have abundant opportunities to receive God’s mercy through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Both the Code of Canon Law and the Introduction to the Order of Penance state that pastors are encouraged to make Confession available to all, arranging days and times that are truly convenient for the community and whenever Confession is reasonably sought (Code of Canon Law, can. 986; Order of Penance, 13). The scheduling of confessions should be done at a time that is truly accessible to the faithful, so that they never feel that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is out of reach. Not only does this allow the faithful to receive the grace of God’s mercy, but it also ensures that pastors fulfill their canonical obligation to provide the Sacrament of Penance for the souls entrusted to them.
Some parishes, especially those with multiple priests, offer Confession even during Mass, provided there is a priest available who is not celebrating the Mass. Pope St. John Paul II, in his motu proprio Misericordia Dei, acknowledges that confessions can be heard at such times to better serve the spiritual needs of the faithful (Misericordia Dei, 2). Still, the Church gently reminds us that this should not become the encouraged practice: “The faithful should be encouraged to approach the Sacrament of Penance at a time when Mass is not being celebrated, especially during the scheduled times” (Order of Penance, 13). Both Eucharisticum Mysterium and Redemptionis Sacramentum express the same desire as the Order of Penance—that confessions would be heard outside of Mass. This helps penitents to experience the Sacrament of Penance more deeply and to participate fully in the celebration of the Eucharist, undistracted and united in prayer.
Nonetheless, the Church permits the Sacrament to be offered during the celebration of the Eucharist and even suggests that it could be for the good of souls to offer the Sacrament of Penance during Mass, especially as we live in an age in which the sense of sin has been diminished (see Notitiae 37, 2001).
Q: Where is the appropriate place for confessions to be heard?
A: The Church desires us to experience the Sacrament of Reconciliation in a setting that expresses both the sacredness of the encounter and
the dignity of each person who seeks God’s mercy. “The sacrament of Penance is usually celebrated, unless a just cause intervenes, in a church or oratory…. Confessions are not to be heard outside of a confessional without a just cause” (Order of Penance, 12). The confessional itself serves as a visible sign of the Church’s ministry of mercy and forgiveness, providing both a sacred space and privacy for the penitent.
To foster a sacred place and the anonymity of the penitent, the bishops of the United States have established clear norms regarding the confessional: “Provision must be made in each church or oratory for a sufficient number of places for sacramental confessions which are clearly visible, truly accessible, and which provide a fixed grille between the penitent and the confessor” (Complementary Legislation for Canon 964, §2 of the Code of Canon Law). These guidelines help foster a space where hearts can freely experience God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
At the same time, the Church also understands that life sometimes places us in extraordinary situations— such as in hospitals, prisons, or moments of pastoral emergency—when Confession outside the confessional becomes necessary. In such moments, priests act with pastoral care and discernment, always seeking to preserve both the privacy and the sacred nature of the Sacrament. Wherever Confession is celebrated, the Church’s deepest desire is for each person to encounter Christ’s mercy.
—Answered by Father Gabriel Greer, Diocese of Wichita, KS
MEMORIAL FOR
James F. Hitchcock, PhD from Myles and Christine Crowe Ned Robert Williamson from Robin and Geraldine Williamson
IN HONOR
Fr. Paul Weinburger from Stan and Cindy Martin
New Book Advances Scholarship
By Jacob Zepp
Altar and Church: Principles of Liturgy from Early Christianity by Stefan Heid, trans. Susan Johnson. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. 512 pp. ISBN: 978-0813237435. $45.00. Hardcover.
The return to the sources prompted by the Liturgical Movement and the Second Vatican Council stimulated an increased interest and advancements in the field of archaeology. This newfound interest in antiquity has led to many new discoveries, and it is often said that we now possess more knowledge about the early Church than we did half a century ago. Stefan Heid’s 2019 monograph entitled Altar und Kirche: Prinzipien christlicher Liturgie, translated into English by Susan Johnson and published by the Catholic University of America Press in 2023, offers a comprehensive archaeological status quaestionis regarding the construction and liturgical use of altars in the early Church. Heid challenges many longstanding assumptions in liturgical scholarship, contending that they are not substantiated by the available evidence.
Monsignor Stefan Heid, Rector of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology and a professor of liturgy and hagiography for over two decades, brings considerable expertise to this study. In this work, Heid utilizes his specialty in archaeology to inform the reader about ancient liturgical practices.
Types of Altars
In the prologue, Heid sets forth his aim to provide “an unimpeded look at the beginning of the Christian Altar” (26). To do this, he draws distinctions between three kinds of altars: 1) the pagan immolation altars, 2) the holy table (mensa sacra), and 3) the profane dining table. Heid astutely points out that an argument maintaining that the immolation altar was not adopted by the early Christians does not logically imply that the dining table was adopted. Rather, he asserts that this ideological-theological argument, which is made by liberal Protestantism, simply assumes that one of the three was not adopted.
While Heid resists the common interpretation of the early Eucharist as a simple communal meal, he also disassociates Christian altars from pagan sacrificial prototypes. He emphatically dismisses any link between the Christian altar and the ordinary dining table of antiquity. Instead, he argues for the mensa sacra as a distinct third category. Whether Heid intends to make a theological claim—that the Mass is or is not a true and proper immolation—remains ambiguous, especially as he intentionally distances early Christian practice from pagan immolation practices.
Against House Churches
In the third section, Heid challenges the widespread assumption that the early Church celebrated the Eucharist in private homes or in catacombs during periods of persecution. He asserts that, even prior to the Edict of Milan, the Eucharist was not celebrated clandestinely, but rather centered on the bishop’s altar in each episcopal city (76–78, 93–95).
Heid relies heavily on early Christian writings rather than on archaeological data to support his
Continued from MYSTICS, page 9
1. Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 97. Joseph Jungmann, the preeminent 20th-century historian of the Roman Rite, viewed this shift towards the subjective piety of the devotio moderna as part of a “corruption theory” of liturgical development where “the priest alone is active. The faithful, viewing what he is performing, are like spectators looking on at a mystery-filled drama of our Lord’s Way of the Cross” [Joseph Jungmann, SJ, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origin and Development (Missarum Sollemnia), trans. Francis A. Brunner (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1988), vol. I, 117].
2. Some prominent examples of this stream of scholarly thought include Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); John Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200–1700,” Past and Present 100 (1983); Charles Caspers, “Augenkommunion or Popular Mysticism,” in Bread of Heaven: Customs and Practices Surrounding Holy Communion, eds. Charles Caspers, Gerard Lukken, and Gerard Rouwhorst (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995). See also the recent treatment in Adoremus Bulletin by Timothy O’Malley, “Medieval Assent: Communion of Body and Soul as an Ascending Model for Liturgy,” available online at https://adoremus.org/2021/01/ medieval-assent-communion-of-body-and-soul-as-an-ascending-model-for-liturgy/
3. Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350), vol. III of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 270.
4. Sabine B. Spitzlei, Erfahrungsraum Herz: Zur Mystik des Zisterzienserinnenklosters Helfta im 13 Jahrhundert (Stuttgart-Bad: Cannstatt, 1991), 77.
5. Cyprian Vagaggini, O.S.B., Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy: A General Treatise on the Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Leonard Doyle and W.A. Jurgens (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1976), 741.
6. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 741–742.
7. See Jack Lewis, “Introduction,” in Gertrud the Great of Helfta: The Spiritual Exercises, trans. Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1989), 11–12.
8. Lewis, “Introduction,” 21.
9. Lewis, “Introduction,” 12. Contrary to certain caricatures of medieval liturgy, the Helfta nuns emphasize the importance of reception of communion, and Gertrude encourages her readers when they receive “of the life-giving body and the blood of the spotless lamb, Jesus Christ, [to say]:…O most dulcet guest of my soul, my Jesus very close to my heart, let
argument that there was only one liturgy in each city around the episcopal altar. His approach is effective, as Heid dedicates nearly one hundred pages to demonstrating that early Christian writers consistently reference a single altar per city (69–163). He also observes that archaeology offers little conclusive evidence on this issue (72). His citations throughout this section are commendably comprehensive. He places particular emphasis on the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, especially the epistle to the Philadelphians, where Ignatius writes: “Take heed then, to partake of the one Eucharist. For (there is only) one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup for the union of His blood, one altar as one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons” (Ignatius, Letter to the Philadelphians, 4; Heid, 49). While many readers interpret this as a metaphor for the one perfect heavenly altar of which all earthly altars are a foretaste (173), Heid maintains that there is no hint of metaphor in Ignatius’s letter, and that Ignatius shows us that there was only one altar and only one bishop per episcopal city.
In this section, Heid’s treatment of the Fermentum rite is notably inadequate. He devotes only a few pages to this crucial topic (141–143). The Fermentum, the Roman practice of distributing a portion of the bishop’s Eucharist to other churches, is highly relevant to Heid’s central claim. For his argument to hold, he must either contest the antiquity of this rite—perhaps by showing that Eusebius does not reference it in his account of Irenaeus’s letter to Pope Victor (see Ecclesiastical History, V.24.15)—or argue that these ancillary celebrations did not themselves constitute full Eucharistic liturgies, functioning instead as a kind of early Communion service. While the book is generally thorough, this section warrants more detailed engagement.
Ad Orientem
Nearly all of the rest of the book is dedicated to providing archaeological and historical data on the question about the orientation of the liturgy from early Christianity—whether and when it was celebrated ad orientem or versus populum. The extensive archaeological and historical data Heid presents here
your pleasant embodiment be for me today the remission of all my sins, and amends for all my thoughtlessness, and also the recovery of all my wasted life. Let it be for me eternal salvation, the healing of soul and body, the inflaming of love, the replenishing of virtue, and the enclosing of my life sempiternally in you…” (28–29).
10. Jean Leclerq, “Liturgy and Mental Prayer in the Life of St. Gertrude,” Sponsa Regis 31 (1960): 3. Gertrude’s skilled capacity to even interweave multiple liturgical texts is visible in her description of a vision of Mary: “May this blessed Virgin, rose without a thorn, immaculate white lily, in whom there flourishes an abundance of every virtue, enrich our poverty; may she be for us, we pray, a perpetual intercessor.” In her translation, Margaret Winkworth points out that the “rose without a thorn” most likely alludes to the sequence Ave Maria known from manuscripts of the 11th and 12th centuries in South Germany, while the “perpetual intercessor” stems from the Marian antiphon Gaude Dei Genetrix [Gertrude of Helfta: The Herald of Divine Love, trans. Margaret Winkworth (New York: Paulist, 1993), 150, n. 86 and 87].
11. Bernard McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, 270.
12. See Lillian Thomas Shank, “The Christmas Mystery in Gertrude of Helfta,” Cistercian Studies 24, no. 4 (1989): 330–331.
13 The Herald of Divine Love, 104.
14 The Book of Special Grace 1.13; cited in Ann Marie Caron, R.S.M.,“Taste and See the Goodness of the Lord: Mechtild of Hackeborn,” in Hidden Springs Cistercian Monastic Women, vol. 3, bk. 2 of Medieval Religious Women, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 516.
15 The Book of Special Grace, 1.13; cited in Caron, “Taste and See the Goodness of the Lord: Mechtild of Hackeborn,” 517.
16 The Book of Special Grace 1.13; cited in Caron,“Taste and See the Goodness of the Lord: Mechtild of Hackeborn,” 517–518.
17. Uwe Michael Lang, “The Later Middle Ages: All Decay and Decline? – A Short History of the Roman Rite of Mass: Part XIV, AB Insight 30 March 2022 (https://adoremus. org/2022/03/the-later-middle-ages-all-decay-and-decline-a-short-history-of-the-romanrite-of-mass-part-xiv/).
18. Anna Harrison, “‘I am Wholly Your Own’: Liturgical Piety and Community among the Nuns of Helfta,” Church History 78, no. 3 (2009): 562.
19 The Herald of Divine Love, 102.
20. See Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 242–243.
21 The Book of Special Grace 6.9; cited in Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture, 247.
is a significant contribution to liturgical scholarship. Regardless of whether one agrees with his conclusions, the scope and rigor of his research are noteworthy. Ultimately, he agrees with Marcel Metzger and Klaus Gamber as he systematically refutes various arguments that claim the original practices were not east-facing. Heid claims that the practice of east-facing liturgy in the Roman tradition was confused during the popes’ “exile” in Avignon (289). The clergy who returned to Rome had lost the ancient understanding of the eastward orientation. This alienation was reinforced by the introduction and multiplication of side altars, without any common direction. The orientation of the celebration at Saint Peter’s in the Vatican has been a topic of much confusion. While the location of the relics of St. Peter has led archaeologists to assert that Mass could not have been celebrated facing east, Heid suggests that even in Old St. Peter’s, it was not as impossible as has been suggested by other archaeologists (289–312).
The book is richly illustrated with images of church buildings, catacomb art, sacramentaries, and other artifacts (416–419, 463–472, passim). Heid convincingly demonstrates that many depictions of seemingly versus populum liturgies represent nonliturgical events. Looking at these many arguments for and against the celebration at the so-called “people’s altar,” Heid urges the reader to “put an end to the mealtable ideology” which is suffused with versus populum arguments (438).
Scholarly and Popular Value
Altar and Church: Principles of Liturgy from Early Christianity offers considerable value to both liturgical scholars and those interested in Church history. It should become a normative academic text and an interesting, but difficult, text for non-specialists. Heid’s argument against the plurality of altars in early episcopal cities will either be refuted by scholarship or change the landscape of scholarship. Additionally, his extensive analysis of the orientation and evolution of the early Christian altar is equally significant.
The question of liturgical orientation continues to shape both scholarly debates and contemporary ecclesial life. Heid’s persistent critique of archaeological interpretations from the 20th century invites careful reconsideration. In the epilogue, he encapsulates a guiding principle that permeates the book: “The risk of archaeologism becomes quite apparent: old practices are copied simply because they are thought to be the original. In reality, however, when isolated from their historical context, they can take on a life of their own and set in motion something completely different from what was originally associated with them and intended” (415).
While the danger of archaeologism is articulated at its conclusion, the concept is a sure motif throughout the book. Given Heid’s archaeological expertise, it stands as a particularly timely caution. Much of what was once confidently asserted about principles of liturgy from early Christianity has proven to be overly simplistic or inaccurate. In offering “an unimpeded look at the beginning of the Christian altar” (26), Heid has demonstrated that the return to the sources around the Second Vatican Council was not a pure translation of past practice to current conditions.
Jacob Zepp is the Master of Ceremonies for the Diocese of La Crosse, WI. He graduated from Catholic University of America with a Master of Arts in Liturgical Studies. He and his wife have two children and live in La Crosse.
22. See Spiritual Exercises 6, 204, and The Herald of Divine Love, 3.26; cited in Holsinger, Music, Body and Desire in Medieval Culture, 247.
23. See Anna Harrison, Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community among the Nuns of Helfta (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2022).
24 The Herald of Divine Love, 2.24; cited in Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy 776–777.
25. English translation of Guéranger’s edition is The Exercises of Saint Gertrude, Virgin and Abbess, of the Order of St. Benedict, trans. Thomas Alder Pope (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1921). In contrast to what he views as the aridity of some works of modern spirituality, Guéranger claims that in Gertrude we breathe in a different atmosphere: “The source of the special blessing attached to St. Gertrude is because it is impregnated with the divine Word, with liturgy and the sacred scriptures. This holy daughter of the cloister drank in light and life day by day from the sources of all true contemplation, from the very fountain of living waters which gushes forth from the psalms and inspired words of the divine office. Her every sentence shows how exclusively her soul was nourished with this heavenly food. She so lived into the liturgy of the Church that we continually find in her revelations that the Savior discloses to her the mysteries of heaven and the mother of God and the saints hold converse with her on some antiphon, or response, or introit…of which she is striving to feel all the force and the sweetness” (xviii–xix).
26 The Herald of Divine Love, 4.20; cited in Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 792.
27. Louis Bouyer, Liturgical Piety (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955), 251.
28. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 791. See also Anselm Stolz, “Mysticism as the Normal Flowering of the Sacramental Life,” Orate Fratres 17, no. 9 (1943): 396.
29. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy, 791–792.
30. Hilda Graef, “St. Gertrude: The Mystical Flowering of the Liturgy,” Orate Fratres 20, no. 4 (1946): 171. See also Pierre Doyère, “St. Gertrude, Mystic and Nun,” Worship 34, no. 9 (1960): 536–543.
31. Lang, “The Later Middle Ages: All Decay and Decline?”
32. David Fagerberg, On Liturgical Mysticism (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2019).
33. Louis Bouyer, “Preface,” in The Herald of Divine Love, 2.
34. Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience on Saint Matilda of Hackeborn (29 September 2010), at The Holy See, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100929.html; General Audience on Saint Gertrude the Great (6 October 2010), at The Holy See, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/ en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101006.html.
