Christmas Mass Times:
St Mary`s, Forest Hall: Christmas Eve 5.30 and Midnight (Missa Cantata, Extraordinary Form) ( carols before both) and Christmas Day 10.30am.
SS Peter and Paul`s, Longbenton Christmas Eve 7.30pm and Christmas Day 9.15am
I have been fortunate in being able to celebrate a sung Midnight Mass in the Extraordinary Form since every year since 1997. I`m glad we once again have the musicians and servers available to make it possible.
UPDATE 24.12.11 ok so it didn`t make much difference. The phone is ringing every five minutes. I have left a message on the answerphone with Mass times but the last caller rang three times so i answered. Some callers refuse to believe me when I tell them the Mass times!
Many thanks to first of all to the cathedral dean, Fr Leighton for his permission for this Mass today. Thanks to singers and servers. Mass celebrated under the legislation Summorum Pontificum and Universae Ecclesiae. Please note the word universae: this is for the whole CHurch and not just a small group of disaffected Catholics who struggle with `the changes`. These have been major initiatives of our Holy Father who wants the Church to rediscover the beauty of her traditional worship. In many places in the world Catholics are becoming familiar again with these ancients forms of worship which sustained the church for so many centuries and which were the inspiration of the lives of so many saints.
Yet in quite a lot of the Catholic world Summorum Pontificum remains a bit of a dead letter with little provision being made on a diocesan level. In some places you can read the diocesan newspaper and never know that SP exists and what does happen remains the initiative of individual priests who never receive any encouragement from their diocesan superiors. Yet time is surely on the side of Summorum Pontificum. Universae Ecclesiae says:
Ordinaries are asked to offer their clergy the possibility of acquiring adequate preparation for celebrations in the forma extraordinaria. This applies also to Seminaries, where future priests should be given proper formation, including study of Latin and, where pastoral needs suggest it, the opportunity to learn the forma extraordinaria of the Roman Rite.
Ridiculous that men should spend 6 years in seminary and only learn half of the Roman Rite. Are there not more important things? Not really. It is the Mass that matters and a priest`s whole life is bound up with knowing and loving the Mass so it is important that he is well-grounded in its tradition. One day….
You may not have heard of it before of today`s feast. Nov 5th? Isn`t that Guy Fawkes night? Well in England & Wales, in the Extraordinary Form, in many dioceses it is Feast of Holy Relics of the diocese. What are they? If bishop Ambrose`s projection is correct then by 2028 all we will have is a few holy relics of the diocese! No, the idea is that all the relics of the saints kept in the diocese are honoured this day. Relics of saints? You mean bits of bones and things?
Subject can`t be raised nowadays especially among many Catholics without a shaking of the head and then stories of how there are three heads of St John the Baptist and enough fragments of the true cross to build a battleship and what about the empty bottle claming to contain the breath of the Holy Spirit or the feather that is meant to be from the wing of the angel Gabriel? Isn`t it all just fraudulent nonsense and nothing to do with our living the faith (same people often say same thing about Summorum Pontificum).
Yet if we look at Christian and especially our Catholic history we can see it was not always so. To an outside observer in the early church it often seemed that Christians were people whose only interest was bones. Julian the Apostate `You have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchres`
The Romans like many Mediterranean societies, regarded the bodies of the dead as polluting. During Rome's classical period, the body was most often cremated, and the ashes placed in a tomb outside the city walls. Much of the month of February was devoted to purifications, propitiation, and veneration of the dead, especially at the nine-day festival of the Parentilia during which a family honoured its ancestors. The family visited the cemetery and shared cake and wine, both in the form of offerings to the dead and as a meal among themselves.
4th century pagan writer Eunapius:
For they collected the bones and skulls of criminals who had been put to death for numerous crimes…. Made them out to be gods and thought that they became better by defiling themselves at their graves. `Martyrs` the dead men were called and ministers of a sort and ambassadors with the gods to carry men`s prayers`
Christians changed the landscape with their feasting at tombs of martyrs. Shrines were constructed which became large churches and to keep on top of things bishops moved to live there. The most famous example is the Vatican: a cemetery where Peter was buried and now the centre of the Catholic world.
Julian pointed out that none of this is mentioned in Gospels. But tombs of prophets were holy places in Judaism and reflected belief in the resurrection of the dead. The martyr`s body remained on earth awaiting the last day when it would be reunited with his or her soul. A place of the presence of the saint and of his or her power. Saints work miracles at their tombs and mirackes are still a requirement for canonisation.
But isn`t this all vulgar superstition? Surely this was for the uneducated masses and the serious Christian theologians had none of it. Not so. One of the books that had a major influence on me was Peter Brown`s Cult of the Saints published in 1981. He shows how the cult of the saints permeated all levels of the church. For example Augustine`s great work The City of God explained how God had not abandoned his people after the sack of Rome in 410 and yet the last book was a long catalogue of the miracles worked at he shrines of St Stephen at Hippo and Uzalis.
Some see this as the decline of the times. AHM Jones in later Roman Empire `a sign of the times that man of the intellectual eminence of Augustine should attach importance to them`
Not just Augustine. Ambrose in 385 discovery of the relics of SS Gervasius and Protasius. Huge excitement an placed in Ambrose`s new basilica under the altar where his own tomb was to be.
And so on. Body of Cuthbert carried around. Durham cathedral built as shrine which became a magnet for pilgrims.
As Christians we say we believe in resurrection of the body. Our bodies are ours forever whatever their final destination. We achieve holiness or we reject God in the body. Our bodies have an eternal significance. The bodies of the canonised saint is a window into heaven. St Therese on tour in his country drew large crowds. Bishop of Shrewsbury has just announced that the heart of the Cure of Ars will be on loan to his diocese soon. Here is something that will live forever in God`s presence. As Catholics the relics of the saints are a pledge of eternal glory. Today we honour their presence in the diocese as pledges of eternal life and so feel closer to the things of heaven and the life of God`s saints
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We live in a noisy world. Our towns and cities are full of noise. There is noise in the skies and on the roads. There is noise in our homes, and even in our churches. And most of all there is noise in our minds and hearts.
The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard once wrote: ‘The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and I were asked for my advice, I should reply: “Create silence! Bring people to silence!” The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. And even if it were trumpeted forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise, then it would no longer be the Word of God. Therefore, create silence!’
‘Create silence!’ There’s a challenge here. Surely speaking is a good and healthy thing? Yes indeed. Surely there are bad kinds of silence? Yes again. But still Kierkegaard is on to something.
There is a simple truth at stake. There can be no real relationship with God, there can be no real meeting with God, without silence. Silence prepares for that meeting and silence follows it. An early Christian wrote, ‘To someone who has experienced Christ himself, silence is more precious than anything else.’ For us God has the first word, and our silence opens our hearts to hear him. Only then will our own words really be words, echoes of God’s, and not just more litter on the rubbish dump of noise.
‘How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.’ So the carol goes. For all the noise, rush and rowdiness of contemporary Christmasses, we all know there is a link between Advent and silence, Christmas and silence. Our cribs are silent places. Who can imagine Mary as a noisy person? In the Gospels, St Joseph never says a word; he simply obeys the words brought him by angels. And when John the Baptist later comes out with words of fire, it is after years of silence in the desert. Add to this the silence of our long northern nights, and the silence that follows the snow. Isn’t all this asking us to still ourselves?
A passage from the Old Testament Book of Wisdom describes the night of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt as a night full of silence. It is used by the liturgy of the night of Jesus’ birth:
‘When a deep silence covered all things and night was in the middle of its course, your all-powerful Word, O Lord, leapt from heaven’s royal throne’ (Wis 18:14-15).
‘Holy night, silent night!’ So we sing. The outward silence of Christmas night invites us to make silence within us. Then the Word can leap into us as well, as a wise man wrote: ‘If deep silence has a hold on what is inside us, then into us too the all-powerful Word will slip quietly from the Father’s throne.’
This is the Word who proceeds from the silence of the Father. He became an infant, and ‘infant’ means literally ‘one who doesn’t speak.’ The child Jesus would have cried – for air and drink and food – but he didn’t speak. ‘Let him who has ears to hear, hear what this loving and mysterious silence of the eternal Word says to us.’ We need to listen to this quietness of Jesus, and allow it to make its home in our minds and hearts.
‘Create silence!’ How much we need this! The world needs places, oases, sanctuaries, of silence.
And here comes a difficult question: what has happened to silence in our churches? Many people ask this. When the late Canon Duncan Stone, as a young priest in the 1940s, visited a parish in the Highlands, he was struck to often find thirty or forty people kneeling there in silent prayer. Now often there is talking up to the very beginning of Mass, and it starts again immediately afterwards. But what is a church for, and why do we go there? We go to meet the Lord and the Lord comes to meet us. ‘The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him!’ said the prophet Habakkuk. Surely the silent sacramental presence of the Lord in the tabernacle should lead us to silence? We need to focus ourselves and put aside distractions before the Mass begins. We want to prepare to hear the word of the Lord in the readings and homily. Surely we need a quiet mind to connect to the great Eucharistic Prayer? And when we receive Holy Communion, surely we want to listen to what the Lord God has to say, ‘the voice that speaks of peace’? Being together in this way can make us one – the Body of Christ – quite as effectively as words.
A wise elderly priest of the diocese said recently, ‘Two people talking stop forty people praying.’
‘Create silence!’ I don’t want to be misunderstood. We all understand about babies. Nor are we meant to come and go from church as cold isolated individuals, uninterested in one another. We want our parishes to be warm and welcoming places. We want to meet and greet and speak with one another. There are arrangements to be made, items of news to be shared, messages to be passed. A good word is above the best gift, says the Bible. But it is a question of where and when. Better in the porch than at the back of the church. Better after the Mass in a hall or a room. There is a time and place for speaking and a time and place for silence. In the church itself, so far as possible, silence should prevail. It should be the norm before and after Mass, and at other times as well. When there is a real need to say something, let it be done as quietly as can be. At the very least, such silence is a courtesy towards those who want to pray. It signals our reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. It respects the longing of the Holy Spirit to prepare us to celebrate the sacred mysteries. And then the Mass, with its words and music and movement and its own moments of silence, will become more real. It will unite us at a deeper level, and those who visit our churches will sense the Holy One amongst us.
‘Create silence!’ It is an imperative. May the Word coming forth from silence find our silence waiting for him like a crib! ‘The devil’, said St Ambrose, ‘loves noise; Christ looks for silence.’
Yours sincerely in Him,
+ Hugh, O. S. B.
Bishop of Aberdeen
7 December 2011
