Category: Liturgical Year

I’ve recently got a couple of e-mails on similar themes. First, a reader writes:

There seems to be some confusion as to the mind of the Church on what
exactly our approach to Advent to be.  History seems to attribute to it a
penitential character similar to Lent.  The purple vestments, the biblical
sense of preparring for something very important with fasting, the
"interruption" of the season with a note of a special Sunday–Gaudete
Sunday for Advent–to remind the faithful of the ultimate goal and to
lighten the burden, so to speak, these all seem to point the way for the
exhortation to the faithful to go beyond their normal course of dailly
taking up their crosses and takin gon more fasting, prayer and almsgiving.

However, I am not aware of any such documented canon, encyclical, precept
or the like such as we have with Lent that calls for this.  We, of course,
as Catholics are not just peple of the book or written word, but in the
modern world, documentation is generally the way the Church communicates
her mind.  She certainly does so regarding Lent and this exhortation
trickles down quite clearly via your local parish in many–I would
speculate–if not most or all places, at least in the United States.

So, do you have any sources to which we can turn in addition to what
comments you have to offer about the season of Advent and penance?

I would venture to say that many Catholics have no idea Advent is
penitential in nature and they have to treat it as such by their
practices.

Then another reader writes:

I had a question which has been bugging me and I can’t seem to get a good answer except that it seems like "things have changed."  Whenever I read something pre-Vatican II it seems like Advent is considered a penitential season.  Not as solemn or penitential as Lent, but nonetheless, penitential.
Yet, I am confronted with Msgr. Peter Elliot’s rather emphatic statement of "The season with which the liturgical year begins is not penitential." – p. 34, #42, "Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year"
This seems to be at a difference to the actual practices of wearing violet, not singing the Gloria, not using the organ as much, or not decorating the altar with flowers as much.  Even the Saints (I believe Saint Francis in his Rule) have referred to Advent as the "little Lent."

I was curious if you knew.

From the little I have read, there is not as much of a penitential nature to Advent as in the East, but I would think that if this is a time of preparation for the Coming of Christ (especially the 2nd Coming) that penance would be an intrinsic part of that preparation (for final judgement).

Given that Advent starts this Sunday, it seems timely to answer these questions, so here goes.

First, it seems that Advent has at least some penitential involvement in its origin. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes:

A synod held (581) at Mâcon, in Gaul, by its ninth canon orders that
from the eleventh of November to the Nativity the Sacrifice be offered
according to the Lenten  rite on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the week.

And the Lenten practices, such as wearing purple, etc., are also strongly suggestive of a penitential season.

I don’t have verification that St. Francis referred to it as the "little Lent." I am aware, though, that that phrase is used in Eastern Orthodoxy.

So there’s certainly a penitential cloud swirling around Advent. Whether that actually solidified in the West such that Lent became a formal penitential season, I can’t say.

If it ever was formally a penitential season, it seems to have lost this character some time ago. The 1907 article in the Catholic Encyclopedia (linked above) does not mention it being penitential.

A check of the 1917 Code of Canon Law also reveals nothing of this sort. The 1917 Code doesn’t use the concept "penitential days." Instead, it uses "days of fast and abstinence" in its place, but when it’s setting forth the days of fast and abstinence, it doesn’t mention Advent (it does mention Lent).

When the General norms for the Liturgical Year and the calendar came out after Vatican II, it had this to say:

V. Advent

39. Advent has a twofold character: as a season to prepare for Christmas when Christ’s first coming to us is remembered; as a season when that remembrance directs the mind and heart to await Christ’s Second Coming at the end of time. Advent is thus a period for devout and joyful expectation.

40. Advent begins with evening prayer I of the Sunday falling on or closest to 30 November and ends before evening prayer I of Christmas.

41. The Sundays of this season are named the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Sundays of Advent.

The weekdays from 17 December to 24 December inclusive serve to prepare more directly for the Lord’s birth.

So no mention of it being a penitential season–unlike Lent, concerning which the General Norms state:

27. Lent is a preparation for the celebration of Easter. For the Lenten liturgy disposes both catechumens and the faithful to celebrate the paschal mystery: catechumens, through the several stages of Christian initiation; the faithful, through reminders of their own baptism and through penitential practices.

And when we look in the 1983 Code of Canon Law–which does use the concept of penitential days–we find:

Can.  1250 The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.

Bam.

So Advent is not a penitential season, at least in the universal law of the Latin Church.

Ya coulda fooled me!

I mean, what’s with all the purple?

One clue may be found in Wikipedia:

In the Roman Church the liturgical color of purple or violet is used in the liturgy. Often times the purple used is a darker purple (sometimes called "Royal Purple") whereas in Lent the color is often a reddish purple ("Roman Purple).

So maybe . . . just maybe . . . the purple in Advent is supposed to be a signification of the birth of a coming King rather than a sign of penance.

In any event, it ain’t a penitental season, so don’t beat yourself up. Do focus on preparing joyfully for getting ready for the commemoration of the birth and the anticipation of the return of the King.

As to how to do that in the concrete, you might want to check out The Catholic Home.

No blogging for me since this is a holy day of obligation in the United States.

Don’t forget to go to Mass if you didn’t go Tuesday evening.

There will be no blogging today in commemoration of the Assumption of Mary (a holy day of obligation in the United States unless it’s been dispensed in your area; call your diocese or your local parish to find out).

Regular blogging service will resume tomorrow.

Today is Ascension Thursday–the celebration of Christ’s ascension into heaven, 40 days after Easter Sunday.

In many parts of the U.S. (though not in California, where I live), this is a holy day of obligation.

I view that as an absurdity. A country should either treat this as a holy day of obligation or not. Culture doesn’t vary that much within a country that it should have different holy days of obligation compared to other parts of the same country. But I’m not the one who makes the rules, and the Vatican approved the current arrangement.

Part of the edge for me is that–given St. Luke’s indication that the ascension occurred 40 days after Easter, we know (at least in approximate terms) that the Ascension occurred on a Thursday, and I don’t like the idea of transferring it to the following Sunday. Of all the holy days, we have special reason to place this one on a Thursday.

Part of it also is that I’ve stood on the place on the Mount of Olives where the site of the Ascention is commemorated by a stone tower, though no one knows precisely where on the mountain the spot was from which Jesus ascended.

Still, it makes it more real to me.

Regardless of what ecclesiastical province you live in–inside or outside of the United States–I hope that you have a very blessed celebration of the transition of Our Lord from this lowly, fallen world back to the realms of glory from which he descended.

We’re getting down to that time of year when the crosses in many parishes will be veiled, so it’s nice that the current edition of the BCL [Bishops’ Committee on Liturgy] Newsletter has a brief Q & A on the law regarding the veiling of crosses in the United States.

Here ’tis:

1. Does the new Missale Romanum allow for the veiling of statues and crosses?
The Missale Romanum, editio typica tertia, provides a rubric at the beginning of the texts for the Fifth Sunday of
Lent, which allows that: “the practice of covering crosses and images in the Church from the Fifth Sunday of Lent
is permitted, according to the judgment of the Conferences of Bishops. Crosses remain veiled until the end of the
celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday; images remain veiled until the beginning of the Easter Vigil.”

2. Have the Bishops of the Unites States expressed the judgment on this practice?
Yes. On June 14, 2001, the Latin Church members of the USCCB approved an adaptation to number 318 of the
General Instruction of the Roman Missal which would allow for the veiling of crosses and images in this manner.
On April 17, 2002, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments wrote to Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, USCCB President (Prot. no. 1381/01/L), noting
that this matter belonged more properly to the rubrics of the Fifth Sunday of Lent. While the decision of the
USCCB will be included with this rubric when the Roman Missal is eventually published, the veiling of crosses
and images may now take place at the discretion of the local pastor.

3. When may crosses and images be veiled?
Crosses and images may be veiled on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Crosses are unveiled following the Good Friday
Liturgy, while images are unveiled before the beginning of the Easter Vigil.

3. Is the veiling of crosses and statues required?
No. The veiling is offered as an option, at the discretion of the local pastor.

3. What is the reason for the veiling of crosses and images?
The veiling of crosses and images is a sort of “fasting” from sacred depictions which represent the paschal glory
of our salvation. Just as the Lenten fast concludes with the Paschal feast, so too, our fasting from the cross
culminates in an adoration of the holy wood on which the sacrifice of Calvary was offered for our sins. Likewise,
a fasting from the glorious images of the mysteries of faith and the saints in glory, culminates on the Easter night
with a renewed appreciation of the glorious victory won by Christ, risen from the tomb to win for us eternal life.

4. Why are crosses unveiled after the Good Friday Liturgy?
An important part of the Good Friday Liturgy is the veneration of the cross, which may include its unveiling.
Once the cross to be venerated has been unveiled, it seems logical that all crosses would remain unveiled for the
veneration of the faithful.

5. What do the veils look like?
While liturgical law does not prescribe the form or color of such veils, they have traditionally been made of
simple, lightweight purple cloth, without ornament.

6. Is it permissible to veil the crosses after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday?
Yes. The concluding rubrics which follow the text for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper (no. 41) indicate that “at an
opportune time the altar is stripped and, if it is possible, crosses are removed from the church. It is fitting that
crosses which remain in the Church be veiled.”

Why there are three different Question #3s in the list, I couldn’t tell ya, but the data’s good.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day–and it’s a Friday during Lent. So the big question on everybody’s mind is: "Do we get to eat meat today?"

The answer is: It depends.

What it depends on is whether or not your bishop has dispensed everybody from the requirement of abstaining from meat.

St. Patrick’s Day is not a solemnity in the U.S. (though it is actually a holy day of obligation in Ireland, I recenlty learned–understandably since he was the single most important guy in the conversion of the Irish to the faith) and so it does not automatically override the abstinence requirement the way that solemnities do.

This means that your bishop has a choice of either doing nothing and letting the abstinence requirement stand or of dispensing folks so they can have corned beef with their cabbage (or whatever).

I know that the bishop of San Diego did dispense the requirement, and I’ve been told that the folks in New York City are similarly dispensed.

(BTW, for folks in other countries, y’all ought not to assume from this blog that you’re necessarily obligated to abstain. That’s U.S. practice on Fridays of Lent, but it’s not the practice everywhere. I recently got a new commentary on the Code of Canon Law that had an appendix with the particular legislation for other English-speaking countries, and I was startled to see how much variation there is on this point in other parts of the world. More on that another time.)

If you know what your bishop has done, you might want to share it in the combox so others won’t have to call the chancery and ask.

A reader writes:

My question is this: Where have the US bishops defined what fasting is for American Catholics during Lent? The reason why I ask is that a friend claims that during the fast days of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, we are not only restricted to eating 1 full meal and 2 smaller snacks, but that we must also not drink any alcohol and other "non-water" beverages.

This didn’t seem right, because what I had always remembered was that fasting was simply the meal restriction. Although I believe that the spirit of Lent will prevent me from drinking alcohol on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, I just wanted a clarification about the law.

I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t seem to find a definition of lenten fasting. Help! Thanks in advance.

The U.S. bishops have not created particular law for the United States regarding the form of fasting to be observed here, which means that the Church’s universal law on the subject will prevail. That law is found in the 1966 apostolic constitution Paenitemini, where Pope Paul VI provided:

The law of fasting allows only one full meal a day, but does not prohibit taking some food in the morning and evening, observing—as far as quantity and quality are concerned—approved local custom (norm III:2).

That’s it.

Beyond that, we have to fall back on the common and constant opinion of learned persons as to what it means.

When we do that, it is immediately clear that in interpreting the Church’s laws regarding fasting the terms "meal" and "food" are understood as being food rather than beverages. If you go look in old moral theologies, they invariably talk about the fact that you can drink things–including things other than water–on days of fasting.

Some moralists have considered alcoholic beverages contrary to the spirit of the day, but they don’t consider beverages other than water to be contrary to the spirit. Examples they commonly cite of beverages that are okay to have on fasting days are milk and fruit juices and coffee with cream, all of which contain calories.

Beverages just are not included under the law of fasting.

This means that, if I wanted, I could drink can after can of low-carb protein shakes on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and consume 3500 calories of them and still be within the letter of the law.

I would not, however, be within the spirit of the law, which is to encourage moderate hunger as a form of spiritual discipline. If I use calorie-laden beverages (or hunger suppressants) to get around that then I am violating the spirit though not the letter of the law.

As a result, to comply with the spirit of the law, on days of fast I drink whatever I normally would drink but I  don’t start chugging extra calories in fluid form. I keep my beverage consumption (mainly zero-calorie Diet 7-Up, since it’s made with Splenda rather than Aspartame) the same and lower the amount of food I eat.

A reader writes:

Tonight my family and I went to Ash Wednesday Mass. We came home and immediately prepared ourselves for bedtime since it was already way past kids’ bedtime, and I wondered what to do with the ashes on our faces.  If Ash Wednesday Mass is in the morning, then typically the ashes gradually fade over the course of the day, and so I don’t feel bad to wash the residual ash off my face– the ashes served their purpose most throughout the day. But this evening when I arrived home it seemed disrespectful to immediately remove the ashes that had only been on for 30 minutes and unseen by anyone outside church. 

My wife stuck to her extensive face-washing routine, and I (hey, I’m a guy) left my face ‘as is’, with the exception of some gentle and reverent blotting to clean off excess ash that might soil the bed linens.

Does the Church teach specifics how to treat the ashes once applied to the forehead?  For example, how long should we wear the cross on our forehead?  And in what manner should we wash-off?

The Church does not require us to get ashes on our heads in the first place. It’s a custom, but the individual members of the congregation are not bound to go forward to receive them.

Neither is there a mandate about how long they should say on. If they stay on for a long time and others see them then that is a side benefit, but their real purpose is to remind you of your mortality (hence what the priest says when he puts them on you) and your need to repent.

Once that goal is accomplished, you can wash them off at any time–especially to avoid things like getting them on bedsheets–though if you can leave them on longer then it is a good public testimony to one’s faith.

I would definitely not have them on the day after Ash Wednesday. Then you’d look like a nut and the good of a public witness would be undone.

There also is no specific manner mandated for washing them off. Just don’t be deliberately respectful as you do so.

Incidentally. lightly blotting the ashes would have never worked for me yesterday. So as to be a better public witness, at Mass at Catholic Answers, Fr. Serpa put BIG BOLD BLACK CROSSES on everyone’s foreheads, not the customary small grey smudges you get most places. We had ashes falling on our clothes all day, and the ashes were so dense that there would have been plenty left to get on my pillowcase if I hadn’t washed them off first.

More and more Protestants are beginning to see Lent as less and less of a "papist" barnacle on the barque of the Christian Church and instead something to which they feel called to observe.

"So, how did Catholic Lenten traditions spread across the border [to Protestantism]? For one thing, the boundaries between traditions are not what they used to be. Crossing them is a steady traffic of believers and seekers. Want to meet someone who was raised Catholic? Try an evangelical megachurch, or the local United Church of Christ. About one-third of believers change churches at least once, according to commonly cited studies. Inevitably, all this changing of churches ends up changing the churches, as people bring bits of their worship traditions with them. Catholic liturgy has appropriated pop music and hand-holding in evangelical style. So, maybe it’s not that surprising that more Protestants are now dipping into the well of Catholic ritual and devotions. In that sense, Lent may be part of a trend: Check out the Ecumenical Miracle Rosary, which recasts Catholic devotional beads for Protestant use by eliminating those troublesome Hail Marys.

"Observing Lent is also part of a Protestant move in the last generation toward more classical forms of spiritual discipline. The hugely influential 1978 book Celebration of Discipline, by Quaker theologian Richard J. Foster, encouraged churchgoers to rediscover fasting and meditation in ‘answer to a hollow world’ and as a way to turn toward God. Some questing Protestants started making like monks, practicing silence and solitude. All this was made more palatable by the improved relations between Catholics and Protestants that followed the Second Vatican Council reforms of the 1960s.

"Perhaps it’s the things that made Lent hard to take as a Catholic kid — the solemnity, the self-denial, the disappearance of hot dogs from the lunchroom — that account most for the season’s broadening appeal. I was schooled to see Lent as a time apart, a respite from the daily pursuit of self-gratification. That apartness seems not unlike the ‘inward and spiritual reality’ that Foster suggested could be found in the ancient disciplines. Catholics have for so long thought of themselves as the defenders of ritual — the masters of incense, genuflection, and splendor — that it still seems strange to be sharing ash-wearing with Presbyterians and Methodists. But our shared affection of late for some of the old ways of worship represents a small victory for mystery, ritual, and awe. Now if we could just come to ecumenical agreement about the evils of frozen fish sticks."

GET THE STORY.

Perhaps the main reason why Lent is migrating again is because the human heart sees in it a helpful spiritual discipline in which the Christian believer may draw near to Christ. That human longing for asceticism as a spiritual discipline may be stifled but cannot be smothered. The renewal of Lent in Protestant circles goes to show that when a wheel is useful enough, it will be reinvented.

Good. It was Ash Wednesday. You were supposed to be.

Ash Wednesday is one of two days of mandatory fast under current Church law. (The other is Good Friday.) Neither day of fasting is severe. In fact, the reduction in food required by law is quite mild.

This is not how it has always been, though. There used to be many more days of customary fasting in Lent. In fact, you basically had to fast for the whole of Lent under universal law.

Sometimes fasting has also been much more severe than it is now.

And that’s okay. There is no one right way to do fasting, and the same amount is not always suitable for everybody in every time and every place, which makes it a good thing that Christ didn’t mandate a particular amount of manner of fasting for his followers. He simply said

And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you [Matt. 6:16-18].

The general manner in which Jesus addressed fasting allowed his Church to adjust the requirements of fasting to meet the changing needs of society.

It’d be really hard–in a developed society today–to mandate a whole month of severe fasting for the entire populace.

For example, if you required people to fast all day and only eat at night then people would get up (or stay up) to eat before it was light and then be tired during they day, perform their job duties sluggishly from lack of sleep and food, and then drive home at 90 miles an hour in a hunger-induced panic to get their evening meal, causing bunches of traffic accidents.

If the only fasting requirement was that you not eat during the day then people would gorge themselves at night, actually gain weight during the month of fasting, and make each night a sleepless Mardi Gras, figuring they’d sleep on the weekends.

How do I know this?

BECAUSE IT’S WHAT HAPPENS IN SAUDI ARABIA EVERY RAMADAN.

Unfortunately, the specificity with which Muhammad is held to have mandated the Ramadan fast makes it difficult or impossible to adapt the institution to the needs of a modern society.

It’s easy for us today to look at the Ash Wednesday and Good Friday fasts as not very much to ask–perhaps even too little to ask–but more severe fasting for long periods of time causes its own problems. It’s one thing to keep a strict fast when the pace of life is slow and you’re in a pre-industrial society and don’t have to get behind the wheel of a car while you’re ravening with hunger.

But those kinds of long, more severe, society-wide fasts are not suited to the living conditions we find ourselves in today in much of the world.

Whether or not the Church always adapts its laws on these matters wisely, I’m so glad that the Church has the Christ-given freedom to adapt them.