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I'd like to share part of the Introduction to this new book -- in the event any of the members would like to know more about it.  There is a whole universe of continuity with Apostolic Tradition to be found herein.  This is the nucleus of the Liturgical Year..........






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        As, historically speaking, Holy Week was the nucleus from which the whole cycle developed, so also fro a liturgical point of view it is the very center of the liturgical year.
        In the early days of the Church there was as yet no liturgical year : it developed gradually, by successive stages, the formation of the liturgical week in all probability preceeding that of the liturgical year.
        The one great absorbing fact which filled the minds of the primitive Christians was the Passion of Our Lord, his Death and Resurrection.  The Mass, or the breaking of bread, which took place in private houses from the very earliest days, as we learn from the Acts of the Apostles, was a commemoration, or rather renewal of these sacred events.  The institution of the Holy Eucharist on Maundy Thursday was but the prelude to the great drama of Calvary, the Resurrection its triumphant sequel. These three events are so intimately connected that they cannot be considered separately ; each on completes and explains the others, and they form the basis of Christianity.
        As we have just seen, these three events are commemorated in the Mass, not in a symbolical form, but in the great reality of the Holy Sacrifice, which is to the Christian the reproduction of the tragedy of the Cross and of the last days of Holy Week.  This is found in all the liturgies, though under various forms : Qui pridie quam pateretur ; hoc facite in meam commemorationem ; unde et memores nos... tam beatae caelos golriosae Ascensionis.  (Who the day before he suffered ; Do this in remembrance of me ; wherefore we thy servants... the blessed passion, his rising up from hell, and glorious ascension into heaven.)
        Thus the Mass is the commemoration of the Passion, the Death and the Resurrection of Our Saviour, and even of the last act of his mortal life, his Ascension.
        The Christians attached such importance to the Mass that all religious worship seemed centered in it and dependent on it.  In the primitive Church of Jerusalem, which was the type and Ideal of religious fervour, we learn from the Acts that the breaking of bread took place daily.  The memory of the sufferings and triumph of Christ, and his own coming to them in communion filled the lives of these Christians. These mysteries were complete in themselves, nothing essential could be added to them.  Their different aspects and various points might indeed be analysed, by they still remained the keystone of the liturgical system.  Every day was therefore in one sense a complete liturgical year, a feast containing substantially all the other feats.  Moreover there was at that time no other liturgical distinction between the days, weeks or years.  The idea developed later on by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others, that to the Christian every day should seem a feast day, was but founded on fact, the proof of which is found in the Epistles of St. Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and even the Didache. {The Didache or the Doctrine of the Apostles is a work of the end of the first century.}


        If this was the state of things in the primitive Church of Jerusalem, where every day was sanctified by the breaking of bread, and spent in prayer and meditation on the Passion of Our Lord, it is obvious that it could not continue when the faith began to spread outside Jerusalem.  New centres sprang up at Caesarea, Antioch, Ephesus, Smyrna, Corinth, Thessalonica, where the exigencies of life made it impossible for these churches to imitate the retired, contemplative life of the apostolic Church of Jerusalem.  The majority of the Christians belonged to the lower classes, slaves, cobblers, tanners, people who had to earn their living, and for whom the quotidie (every day) of the Acts, the daily Mass, was an impossibility.  It naturally followed that one special day in the week was set apart for the synaxis {synaxis meas meeting, assembly}, when they could all meet together.  Everything pointed to the sabbath being chosen for this day, the day kept sacred by the Jєωs, the day on which "God himself rested after the creation.  Here however occurs a break with tradition, a fact of the lightest importance, as only the Apostles could have taken the initiative in this case.  The sabbath was not the day chosen for the liturgical syanxis by the day after, the prima sabati, the day we call Sunday, or dies Dominica, the Lord's Day, the day of Our Lord's Resurrection, Easter Day.  It was the first day of the Hexameron, when God began creation by saying : " Let there be light. "  From the very beginning this day had been rich in symbolical meaning.  This was a liturgical revolution,  a decision full of import for the future, marking the separation of Christianity from Judaism.
        Although Christianity owed its origin to the Mosaic religion, yet the mission of the latter was but to prepare the way for that of the Messias.  The Church kept as a precious treasure the Sacred Scriptures, she embodied many Jєωιѕн rites in her own ceremonies, but she plainly showed to those who lagged behind in Judaism that she had definitely broken with it.  St. Paul brings this out strongly in his Epistles.  The substitution of the Sunday for the Sabbath must have been a cruel blow to the converted Jєωs, all the harder to bear as it was  repeated every week, a striking proof of the new order of things, et antiquum docuмentum novo cedat ritui. (Let types of former days give way to the new rite.)  Some witnessed it with regret, others clung to the Sabbath and left the Church.  The Judaising Christians used it as a fresh cause of complaint against the Church, whom they accused of throwing aside too lightly the Mosaic customs.
        The institution of the Sunday, mentioned in the Acts and the Apocalypse, was thus a very instructive lesson for the Christians of those days.


        It also marked the first step in the institution of a liturgical week and year.  The Sunday commemorated in a very special way the Resurrection, being as it were the Easter Day of every week ; but Easter does not commemorate as an isolated fact the Resurrection only, but also the Passion and Death of Our Saviour.  In the primitive Church it was spoken of as pascha staurosimon, pascha anastasimon, the pasch of the Crucifixion, the pasch of the Resurrection ; from which comes the keeping of the Friday as a holy day, and possibly also the Wednesday, as it was the day on which Judas betrayed Our Lord.  Towards the close of the first century these two days are spoken of as being days for the station.  Thus the liturgical week was founded on the memory of Our Lord's last days, the Sunday, Wednesday and Friday being specially honoured, but Saturday was passed over* as also the Thursday, a Jєωιѕн fast-day.


        This led to further developments.  Although chronologically speaking the liturgical week preceded the liturgical year, and the Christians commemorated the Resurrection every Sunday, yet the fixing of a date for the special keeping of this feast every year had to be considered.  This was a difficult problem.  The Christians of those days thought that it should be March 25th, a memorable day for them, as they liked to think that the work of creation was started on that day.  It was also held to be the day of the Annunciation.  which inevitably settled that of the Nativity of Our Lord nine months later.
        Easter is the pivot on which turns the whole liturgical cycle, but from the beginning this date was the subject of much controversy.  Was the Sunday to give up its privilege, and the feast be kept on any day of the week, which would be the result of keeping to March 25?  This still remains the difficulty in the question of the reform of the calendar.  
        Some kept Easter on March 25th, others on the fourteenth day of the March moon which was the date of the Jєωιѕн pasch ; in either case the idea of Sunday being abandoned, as these dates would fall on the various days of the week successively.  In the end the Sunday kept its privilege, for after endless discussions the Holy See by an act of supreme authority decided that the feast of Easter should be kept on the Sunday after the fourteenth day of the March moon.  The Church this attained a double end, she maintained the privilege belonging to the Sunday, and she  showed once more her determination to throw off the yoke of Jєωιѕн customs.  Those who refused to accept this ruling were very few.  They left the Church and were known as the quartodecimans, or those who kept the fourteenth day.


        This from an historical point of view is the origin both of Holy Week and of the liturgical year.  The Mass renews the memory of the different events in the work of our Redemption, every Sunday commemorates the Resurrection and the yearly cycle of the liturgy brings back Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  This in itself proves the importance of Holy Week but only from the historical side of the question.
        To the Christian, from a liturgical point of view this week sums up the whole Christian teaching, as will be shown later on.   The Holy Week of today marks a more advanced stage in the development of the liturgy but in its essentials it has not changed {this was written long before the changes that began in 1954}.  Thursday, Friday and Sunday are still the most important days, but it was necessary to embrace all the elements of Our Lord's last days more fully, so the preceding Sunday, known as Palm Sunday, was included, a custom which dated from the fourth century.


        In the course of this work we shall quote frequently from a very interesting docuмent published in the nineteenth century, the Peregrinatio Silviae, (Pilgrimage of Sylvia).  It is the impressions of a Spanish abbess Sylvia, or rather Etheria, who in the fourth century assisted at the Holy Week ceremonies in Jerusalem.  Many of our present day rites were in use then, and they probably originated in the very city where Christ was condemned, suffered, died, was buried and rose again, and were not invented during the " detestable " Middle Ages as some Protestant critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries asserted.
        In consideration then of all these facts one is justified in saying that Holy Week in the beginning was of apostolic origin and was finally developed and perfected in Jerusalem in the fourth century {A.D. 301-400}, until it became the magnificent ceremonial which we shall now proceed to study. [/size][/font]




* {A pun?  Note - Saturday was the erstwhile Sabbath}

This great Introduction goes on for another xv pages (15pp.) whereas I have only copied here the first quarter of them (v).  Here is the outline for the most edifying material that ensues:

II.  OUR LORD'S LAST WEEK UPON EARTH
III.  THE LITURGY OF HOLY WEEK
             The Saturday of Lazarus.
             Palm Sunday and the Other Days of Holy Week.
             Tenebrae of the Last Three Days of Holy Week.
             Lauds.
IV.  THE THEOLOGY OF HOLY WEEK
             The Death and Resurrection of Our Lord.
             The Jєωιѕн Pasch and the Christian Pasch.
             Jesus, Messias and King.
             The Institution of the Holy Eucharist.
             Penance - Baptism - Confirmation.
             The Mystery of the Passion.
             The Priesthood of Our Lord.
             The Symbolism of the Fire.
CONCLUSION



Following the above Introduction is 363 pp. of liturgical text in Latin and English, culminating with Easter Sunday.  If you don't have your own copy yet, maybe now's the time, if they don't sell out before Holy Week arrives.  


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Yesterday was First Friday in April, and today is First Saturday. This is the Fourth Week of Lent.  In the first day, this thread has had less than 10 views.  I wonder if people don't know what Holy Week is.  Because if they do know, how could they not care enough to open the thread and look at it?  


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I recently bought a copy of this book and intend to use it for devotional reading during Holy Week.  

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This beautiful book, Holy Week, by Dom Cabrol, O.S.B., has some short and powerful observations about this central doctrine of the Catholic Faith.  

In the second section of the Introduction, II. OUR LORD'S LAST WEEK UPON EARTH, we find the following:

...On Maundy Thursday Our Lord was again at Bethania, having returned the evening before.  This day was the first day of the azymes, and in the evening the Jєωs would eat the pasch in Jerusalem.  Jesus sent two of his best loved disciples, Peter and John, to make all things ready for the supper in the house of a wealthy Jєω.  This was the last meal Our Lord was to take with his disciples, and so great an event was to take place during it that it was fitting that all should be done with as much solemnity as possible.  The Cenacle was a large room, becomingly decorated for a feast.  Before the institution of the Holy Eucharist Our Lord washed the feet of His apostles;  the account of this in St. John's Gospel is read during a ceremony which takes place on Maundy Thursday...

The account of the Last Supper comes in the Passion according to the three synoptic writers.  It was at this moment that there was strife amongst the apostles as to who should seem to be the greater, followed by the promise made to St. Peter that he should confirm his brethren and the warning of his betrayal (Luke xxii. 26-27; John xiii. 33-38). ...The agony in the garden, the arrival of Judas and seizing of Jesus, the trial and condemnation, all these events which happened between Thursday night and Friday morning are recounted in all the four Gospels, as also the account of the death and burial of Our Lord.  

On this tragic Friday night all seems lost from the human point of view.  The apostles, completely demoralized, have scattered and hidden themselves. Nothing is heard of their doings on the following sabbath day, only the placing of the guard round the sepulchre by the chief priests and Pharisees is mentioned.  It was on the day following the Sabbath, our Sunday, that the sudden glory of the Resurrection shone out with the dawn.

III. THE LITURGY OF HOLY WEEK
...Palm Sunday and the Other Days of Holy Week...

From the liturgical point of view the last three days of Holy Week [the Sacred Triduum] are the most important of the whole year.  Each has its special liturgy and ceremonies;  Maundy Thursday, the institution of the Eucharist, the blessing of the holy oils and the Mandautum or washing of the feet;  Good Friday has a series of ceremonies...

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are, liturgically speaking, one, being so intimately connected, as Holy Saturday is with Easter Day.   This division simplifies the explanation of the ceremonies taken as a whole.  

...To understand the meaning of the liturgy it must be remembered that Holy Week ends on Saturday evening before the night office begins because this latter belongs to another part of the liturgy, that of Paschal Time which lasts till the Ascension, or rather until Pentecost.  It is the sacred number of fifty days corresponding to the season of Lent, a season all of joy and triumph setting off one of penance and mortification.  

[Elsewhere we see, there at one time was a great curtain that was drawn across the sanctuary during the Triduum, such that the faithful underwent the same exclusion from the sacred mysteries that all the public sinners had to endure the rest of the year.  This practice was eventually abandoned, but there are still some churches that retain it, such as the Eastern Coptic Orthodox.]

...Holy Week is the culminating point of the liturgical year, the great week during which we spend those last days of Our Lord's life on earth in union with him.  The Church shows the tend of her thoughts by deeply moving ceremonies full of profound meaning, which do far more than any other exercise could to teach the Christian the reality of the mysteries of faith and fill his heart with grateful love for Our Saviour.  

...Holy week is the most important of all the liturgical seasons, and this not only because the Church desires her children to spend these days in recollection and prayer, but because these very prayers and rites have been preserved with such loving veneration that they are the most ancient portion of the liturgy, and most truly representative of the primitive spirit and character.

This is the reason why archaeologists, historians and liturgists have studied this part of the liturgy so carefully.  Their works are of the greatest interest to those who study the historical origin of our ceremonies.  (The principal works on this subject are found in the attached biographical index.)This was written and published in several editions from 1926-1927.  How could the author have anticipated at that time that the 'liturgists' of the next generation would be digging into history to discover reasons that they could use as excuses to DISCARD these ancient rites, and in the worst cases, and such is a matter of docuмented fact, blanket statements of some claim to antiquity was pronounced as the reason to do so, without providing any proof of the historical basis.  Then later, it was discovered that there was in fact NO historical basis at all for some of those claims.  This was a typical ploy of Annibale Bugnini, for example, and it is on record.  When it was discovered, this was why he was banished by Pope Paul VI to a distant country, to live out his years in exile from his erstwhile position of influence.  But the damage had been done.  If Paul VI really was a man of his convictions, why didn't he UNDO the damage?  It seems to me that he merely threw Bugnini under the bus as a fall guy, a scapegoat, to appease the traditionalists, but the changes themselves were entirely acceptable to Paul VI, and he was secretly happy that the ancient rites were being de-constructed.  IMHO.  

NONETHELESS, the revised versions that the CMRI and the SSPX, for example, are using contain much moving symbolism and beauty for our edification, and we are well-advised to participate as best we can in them with a spirit of submission to God's will.  We should not go in there with a chip on our shoulder, or to grumble about what IS NOT THERE anymore.  What you see and hear and do tonight, Holy Thursday, and tomorrow, Good Friday, and subsequently in the Paschal Season on Holy Saturday evening and Easter Sunday morning, is what God has provided you in this time of great confusion, and you are well-disposed to edify yourself by thinking and praying over the things that we have as well as the things that we have recently lost, as the Scripture says,
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