St Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church - Liturgy and Worship: TImes and Seasons

In the first several centuries of the Church’s life, the liturgical year developed around the annual celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection: the Christian Passover or Pascha. At first the Early Christians marked a single day that encapsulated the whole of the Paschal Mystery. Later this was expanded to what became known as the Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Then an entire season of feasting was added, stretching to the Pentecost. Finally a season of preparation and fasting was added, encompassing the forty days before Easter.

The high point of this journey was the Great Vigil of Easter when newcomers to the faith would be Baptized and share in their first Eucharist. The forty days preceding Easter, by which name the season was widely known (Quadragesima in Latin, or simply marked by the Roman numerals XL) and which became known in England as Lent (an old Middle-English word for Spring), was initially a time of Baptismal preparation. Later it became a period for the reconciliation of penitents, who would have been ceremonially ejected from the Church on Ash Wednesday and readmitted on Maundy Thursday.

High Altar vested for Lent and Passiontide Lent

Lent, then, is a period of preparation for Easter and an excellent time for the preparation of people for Baptism. It is also a period for intentional reconciliation. It is not, then, simply a time of wailing, moaning, and gnashing of teeth. It is a season of contemplation, prayer, and discernment. Its austerity—both in our personal life and in our corporate practice as a Church in the liturgy—is a way of heightening our sense of celebration when Easter finally arrives. In order to properly feast, we humans have usually found that it is important to engage in a period of fasting. In this way the feast is all the sweeter.

On the right is the High Altar vested for Lent and Passiontide

There are several features of the liturgy at Saint Ignatius that characterize Lent:

Alleluia (or the lack thereof): As most of us know, “Alleluia” is never said during Lent. This way, when the Great Alleluia of the Easter Vigil is proclaimed, it has all the more impact.

The Great Litany Every Sunday in Lent, except for the Fourth Sunday (see below), we sing the Great Litany in procession.

Kyrie and Gloria in excelsis We never sing the Glory to God (Gloria in excelsis) in Lent, even on Sundays and other feasts (except on the March 25, when celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation). We continue, of course, to sing Lord have mercy (Kyrie eleyson). You will also notice that instead of a complex, polyphonic setting of the Ordinary of the Mass (the invariable chants), we sing the traditional plainsong melody (Kyrie XVII: Kyrie salve) of the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei

The Tract In place of the Alleluias traditionally sung right before the Gospel we sing through-composed psalm verses, known as the Tract.

Solemn Prayer over the People It is an old tradition not to pronounce a blessing at the end of the Eucharist in Lent, but rather to say a Solemn Prayer over the People. We take these traditional prayers from the Episcopal Churchs’ Book of Occasional Services (2003, pp. 24-26). The deacon bids the prayer with, “Bow down before the Lord” or “Humble your head before God” (this a literal translation of the medieval text) and the celebrant to say the prayer.

A word about 4 Lent, “Rose Sunday” Many Churches in the Anglo-Catholic traditions, including Saint Ignatius, celebrate the fourth Sunday in Lent, the mid-way point between Ash Wednesday and Easter, as a day of less solemnity with a bit more fulness than other Lenten services. This day is known as “Rose Sunday,” “Refreshment Sunday,” or Laetare (from the first word of the Introit of the Mass in the Sarum and Roman rites). Rather than the usual Lenten vestments, rose coloured vestments are worn, a practice that most probably originates with the mediaeval tradition of the Pope blessing roses on this day.

Week-day celebrations Lesser Feasts and Fasts provides a full Proper for the week-days of Lent, complete with Collects and lessons. In general we prefer to celebrate our daily Mass as “of the fast” rather than commemorating the Lesser Saints’ Days that fall in Lent. We mark these with a “Memorial” in the Prayers of the People.

The Way of the Cross The Book of Occasional Services also provides a service of the Way (or Stations) of the Cross. The liturgy is expressly not to be used as the principal liturgy of Good Friday, but rather as an additional devotion that could be enacted, with a greater or lesser elaboration throughout Lent. We pray the Stations of the Cross and celebrate the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament each Friday in Lent at 6:30 p.m.

Liturgical Colour and Church Decoration Traditionally at Saint Ignatius, following the customs of the Western Rite, the liturgical colour for Lent is Purple, which colour we will use for Sunday services throughout the season (except 4 Lent when we will use Rose vestments and hangings). For weekday masses, however, in the Lady Chapel, we are using Lenten white vestments and hangings, also known as the Lenten Array. In England before the Reformation the use of the Lenten Array—in which all sculpture and images were veiled in unbleached linen, often decorated in red and black with the Instruments of the Passion and other symbols—was almost universal for ferial celebrations. The Lenten Array is symbolic of the pared-down simplicity, even austerity, of the season and can be quite beautiful. It marks a stark contrast with ferial vestments of the post-Epiphany season and the oxblood red vestments of Passiontide, not to mention the lavish white, gold and red silken vestments of Eastertide. It also makes a clear visual distinction between Lent and Advent. The Lenten Array came back into wide use in England and America from the 1920s through the 1960s with the popularisation of the so-called English or Anglican Use and the work of the Rev’d Dr Percy Dearmer. The white altar frontal in the Lady Chapel is from this period and is the work of the Warham Guild. The Lenten Array is still to be found in many places throughout the Anglican Communion, including Westminster Abbey and the monastery church of the Society of St John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Mass. Other images of the Lenten Array can be seen here.

On the right you can see the Lenten Array in the Lady Chapel.

The Lenten Array in the Lady Chapel

Vestments at High Mass in Lent You may notice that at high mass during Lent, the deacon and subdeacon both wear chasubles rather than their customary dalmatic and tunicle. This custom is a hold over from the period between about 300 and 900 at Rome, when everyone wore chasubles as the overcoat when proceeding to the day’s station church for Mass. Only the pope, or bishop celebrating in his place, kept a chasuble on throughout Mass, changing into a different, probably silken, one when he arrived (Ordo Romanus I). There seems to have developed a custom of the subdeacon retaining his chasuble to the Epistle and the deacon retaining his to the Alleluia or Tract and Gospel (Amalarius of Metz records this custom in 831). Given that liturgical scholars have noted that the most ancient customs are often retained for the most holy occasions, it seems only natural that in Advent and Lent, the two penitential seasons of preparation, this ancient use of the chasuble that makes reference to the customs of the Roman stational Mass would be preserved. This practice is reflected in all the medieval books, as well as in the post-Tridentine Roman books, forms of this customs surviving in the authorised Roman rite up until Vatican II. It seems as if this custom was revived at Saint Ignatius (and in other Anglo-Catholic parishes) as early as the 1920s (from which time there is a vestment inventory indicating the presence of deacon’s and subdeacon’s chasubles for Advent and Lent) or even before. While we no longer preserve this custom in Advent, preferring that the deacon and subdeacon wear only the alb and amice, we still practice this convention in Lent.

From a reading of the Roman Ordines (instructions for the papal Mass at Rome) and the medieval missals and customaries (the English books have the fullest instructions), as well as from some surviving visual evidence, it is clear the deacons and subdeacons wore regular chasubles. They were specifically instructed to enter with their hands kept inside the garment rather than clasped together outside, as priests were instructed to do. The subdeacon took his off to read the Epistle and, although there is no instruction for putting it back on, probably took it up again before the end of the service. The deacon took his off, folded it, rolled it up, put it on like a stole, and secured it with his stole and girdle to read the Gospel. There are no instruction for what he is to do with it next. We can also assume that he kept it in this position so he would better be able to serve mass and put it back on in the usual way to return to the sacristy.

The neo-Gothic creation of “folded chasubles” as a special garment probably derives from two places. The first “folded chasuble” vestment is simply the post-Tridentine Roman broad stole—it is just a cut down chasuble in the same way the fiddle-back is a cut down chasuble. The second, the kind we have at St Ignatius, is probably an English invention of the late 19th or early 20th century and probably derives from the pleated-up-the-front chasubles worn by the candidates for the priesthood in Roman ordination services at the time. Today at Saint Ignatius we have the deacon remove his folded chasuble before reading the Gospel, when he puts on the broad stole as a reminder of the chasuble being folded at this point in the service, and take up the vestment again before the post-communion prayer, a convenient point in the service towards the end.