The festal year : or, The origin, history, ceremonies and meaning of the Sundays, seasons, feasts and festivals of the church during the year, explained for the people

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

THE

Preface

In the days of the infancy of the Christian Church, when, with a mighty wind, the Holy Ghost in tongues of fire came down on the Apostles, he breathed into them his own divine wisdom, and kindled in their hearts the fire of his love. Thus enlightened with the light of that fire from heaven and moved by the Holy Spirit, the Apostles and the followers of Christ dedicated the year, its days, its times and its seasons to the memory of the Saviour, to the mysteries of our redemption, and to the work of the Spirit of God, in saving the generations of men, as they come and go upon the stage of this world. They took the finest passages and parts of the Old and of the New Testaments, the inspired words of the ancient Patriarchs, the magnificent canticles of the Prophets, the simple yet sublime writings of the Apostles and their successors, and of them formed for each Sunday, Season, Feast and Festival, an Office of praise, of prayer and of thanksgiving unto God. Such was the beginning of that striking and magnificent ceremonial or Liturgy of the Church, called the Latin Bite.

In the following pages will be opened up before you, in a clear and simple manner, the origin, history, meaning and ceremonies of the Christian Year, which the Church uses in her public Services, when her prayers, her praises, and her thanksgivings ascend ever up before the throne of God. Spouse of Christ, and directed by the Holy Spirit, she offers daily unto our Creator a Service and a Sacrifice worthy of the Godhead and worthy of our study.

VI

More than eighteen hundred years have come and gone since Christ, the Saviour, walked this earth, yet by these yearly rites and ceremonies, by these striking forms and figures, by these types and symbols, changing daily as the Sundays and Seasons, the Feasts and Festivals of the year pass by, by these the remembrance and the memory of God's creation and of the Son's redemption are ever kept before the minds of men. Take away the celebration of the Festal Year and soon the works of the Creator and of the Redeemer would be forgotten. Such is the object of the yearly services of the Church, to keep forever bright and green before the world the remembrance of the creation, the redemption, and the salvation of the human race.

We have dug deep into the rich mines of ancient learning and of lore, searched the works of the great Fathers of the Church, read the writings of those master minds, who in the early days of the Christian religion, gathered up the traditions of the Apostles ; we looked over the works of both ancient and modern times in preparing for this work, but with regret we are forced to say that the duties of a parish, added to our poor abilities, have made the book much inferior to what the subject demands, yet we promise you, reader, that you will be well repaid for reading the following pages, and if you find anything to admire in the book, give honor to the Holy Ghost, whose wisdom you will find reflected in the yearly services of the Church.

Feast of St. Luke the Evangelise.

Chapter I. The Division Of Time

Reasons relating to the Division of Time, .... 9

I. The Hour, 13

II. The Day, _ . 1.5

III. The Week, 21

IV. The Month, 28

V. The Year, 35

Chapter II. The Religious Year

Reasons relating to the Religious Tear, - 37

I. Feasts among the Pagans, ------- 38

II. Feasts among the Jews, ---._.. 42

III. Feasts among the Christians, 50

IY. The Public Offices of the Church, .... 55

V. The Bible during the Year, ---_._ qq

Chapter III. The Advent Season

Reasons relating to the Advent Season, 78

I. The First ..^Sunday of Advent, 87

II. Thk Immaculate Conception, -->_... 89

III. The Second Sunday of Advent, 94

IV. The Third Sunday of Advent, --_... 95 V. The Fourth Sunday of Advent, - 98

Chapter IV. The Christmas Season

Reasons relating to the Christmas Time, - . . . 105

I. Christmas Day, - _ . - 121

III. The Epiphany, - 131

IV. The Holy Name,. - - - - . . . . 139 V. Candlemas Day, _ - 142 b CONTENTS.

Chapter V. The Septua Gesima Season

Reasons relating to the Septuagesima Season, - - - - ] 50

I. Septuagesima Sunday, 161

II. Sexagesima Sunday, -------- 164

III. QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY, - 167

IY. Shrovetide, - - - 173

Y. Ash "Wednesday, - 177

CHAPTER Vt

THE LENTEN SEASON

Reasons relating to the Lenten Season, .... 184

J. The First Sunday op Lent, ------- 206

II. The Second Sunday of Lent, 210

III. The Third Sunday of Lent, 215

IY. The Fourth Sunday of Lent, 218

Y. Passion Sunday, - 223

Chapter VII. The Holy Week Season

Reasons relating to Holy Week, ------ 228

I. Palm Sunday, 236

II. Holy Wednesday, 247

III. Holy Thursday, . - 255

V. Holy Saturday, 271

Chapter VIII. The Easter Season

Reasons relating to the Easter Season, - 280

II. Low Sunday, - 300

III. The Annunciation, - - 302

IV. The Ascension, 306

V. Whitsunday, 308

Chapter IX. The After-pentecost Season

Reasons relating to the After-Pentecost Season, . - - - 315

I. Trinity Sunday, - 321

II. Corpus Christi, - 323

ITI. The Assumption, 328

IV. The Feast of All Saints, 331

V. The Feast of All Souls, ------- 332

The Festal Year.

Chapter I . — T he Division" of Time. REASONS KELATING TO THE DIVISION OF TIME

Let me lay before you, reader, the times, the seasons, the feasts and the festivals of the year. Let me take you back among the writers of the past and show you the origin, the history and the meaning of the rites and services of the Christian year. Let me tell you how the Apostles and the followers of our Lord dedicated the hours, the days, the weeks, the months and the seasons of the year to the memory of Christ, by which, from generation to generation, His coming, His life, His wonderful works and His awful death are brought before the minds of men.

And Thou, O Holy Spirit, who guided the prophets of olden times, wilt Thou guide me now ? Thou who moved upon the waters 1 on the morning of creation, move now my mind and pen to show Thy face as seen in these wonderful rites and ceremonies. Thou whose guiding hand directed the Church in celebrating the festal year, wilt Thou direct me now, that I may clearly and worthily show forth the beauties of the Christian feasts and festivals ? Be with the reader going through this book ; open his mind to see the truth ; inflame his heart that he may love, so that, guided by knowledge and inflamed by love, he may rest at last in God, the fountain of all knowledge and of love.

To prepare the reader to understand the festal year, we will first treat of the different parts into which time is divided. But what is time ? Time is a part of duration.

If we study the duration of beings, we find one without

10 DURATION AND ETERNITY.

a beginning or an end, having no first or last. There never was a time when He was not ; time will never come when He will not be. That being is God. Thus looking back we find his duration lost in the past without a beginning ; looking ahead we find his duration lost in the future without an end. Not only that, but with God there is no past or future ; with Him all is present. That is His eternity, 1 revealed by Jehovah in the olden days of the splendors of the Egyptian kingdom, when the children of Israel dwelt in the land of Gessen. When God called Moses from the burning bush He said, " I am who I am." 2

If we consider again the duration of beings, we find some stamped with the image of the Godhead — creatures brought forth from nothing, but to last forever — to be as immortal as God Himself — created to sing forever the praises of the Lord. They are creatures having reason and free will ; they are angels and men. There was a time when they were not. A time will never come when they will not be. They have not the duration of eternity in the past, but they will have the duration of eternity in the future. They were made to the image and to the likeness of God. Their duration is called their age. Of them the Royal Prophet speaks where he says, " Thou enlightenest wonderfully from the everlasting hills." 3

If we examine still the duration of beings, we find others brought from nothingness and dark night on the morning of creation, when God created the world. They are the material things of the universe. Once they were not ; again they will not be. . Their duration is called time. They were made by the Creator when, in the beginning, " God created the heaven and the earth." 4

Thus, eternity is the everlasting, unchanging, 5 ever present duration of God. Age is the never dying, ever living duration of created minds ; while time is the duration and the measure of the movements of material things. 6 Material things belong to the mineral kingdom, and as far as science goes to-day everything we see around us is divided into sixty-eight simple substances ; but as the knowledge of the human race increases

1 S. Aug., Vol. xii. 31. 2 Exod. iii. 14. s Ps. lxxv. 5.

4 Gen. i. 1. 5 S. Aug., Vol. xxvii. 297.

8 San Severino, Philos. Christ. Compend. St. Aug., Vol. xix. 23

ATTRACTION AND MOTION. 11

every day, and mind grasps the secrets of nature, these may change in future times.

According to Newton's laws, all pieces of matter attract each other, 1 and that attraction is according to their mass and the distance they are apart. It takes place as though a string pulled each particle toward the larger body. Among the little parts it is called molecular attraction, 2 from the Latin, meaning a little mass, while among the suns and planets it is called gravitation, from the Latin, signifying heavy. What it is, or how it takes place, no one knows, as the very nature of matter is to be dead, without motion — to stay where it is put till moved by another force outside of itself. We find all matter in movement. Nothing in the universe is still. It is God moving the material things of the world to prove that He exists. 3

Under the influence alone of attraction matter takes the round form, as the rain drops falling from the clouds, as oil dropped in the water, as the dewdrop on the flower, as the shining orbs of the sky. If the suns and planets of the heavens were left to this attraction alone, soon they would all come together, being pulled by gravitation the smaller toward the larger, and the systems of the universe would end in one mighty crash, as the worlds would be pulled together with an ever increasing quickness, and but one mighty mass would remain of the fragments of the shining worlds of the sky/

Besides attraction, at their creation God gave each sun and planet two movements — one that of turning around on its own centre, the other a movement around a great central mass. For example, the earth turns around on itself once each day, and around the sun once each year. The earth attracts the sun, and the sun the earth. They do come together, because at the creation God gave the earth a motion as He launched it into space, so that it whirls around the sun. As when you tie anything to a string and whirl it quickly around, it tries to fly away, but the string holds it fast ; thus the attraction of the sun holds the earth. The attraction of gravitation is like the string, while the movement of the earth around

3 St. Thomas Sum. Theol. P. 1., Q. 11, A. 3.

12 WHAT IS TIME?

the sun tends to hurl us off into space ; but these two forces haying been fixed at the creation exactly the same, one balances the other, and thus the earth remains at the same distance from the great central orb of day, the sun.

The whole universe is in motion. The planets swing in ceaseless movement around their suns, or the smaller around the larger, all so balanced and so placed, and so depending on each other, that if one of these great worlds would cease to be, the grand and magnificent harmony of the heavens would be destroyed, and the stars and all the suns and planets would in time fall into some great centre of the universe; all would come together overwhelmed with one mighty crash. From the researches of astronomers of our times 1 that will never take place, and the system of the heavenly bodies has not in it the seeds of ruin and decay.

Time is the measure of the movements of the heavenly bodies. 2 The earth goes around the sun, and the moon around the earth. The movements of these two measure for us time. The sun and moon, then, regulate the times, the days, the weeks, the months and the seasons of the Church.

Time, says Cicero, is a certain part of a year, a month, a day, or of any other space. But we say that time is the measure of the motions of the heavenly bodies. As they move according to gravitation, which is always the same, they are the most perfect markers of time.

Looking over the histories of the past, we find the oldest account of an instrument to mark time to be given in the Bible, where Isaias the prophet cried to the Lord, "and He brought the shadow ten degrees backward . ... in the dial of Ahaz." 3 That was the sun dial, by which the shadow of a stile marked upon a dial the hours of the day. Again, we find the record of the sun dial among the Romans, for we read of the one made by Curser, more than three hundred years after the days of the kings of Juda, when Isaias was foretelling the coming of the Lord. The first machinery made to measure time was a clock moved by the dropping of water. It was used by the Egyptians under the Ptolemies, still more improved by Clesibius of Alexandria, till carried to

1 Leverrier. 2 Sec St. Thomas, Sum. Theo., P. 1, Q. xxxv. ad. 1. S. Aug., Vol. iii. p. 86. 3 IV. Kings xx. 11.

MEASURING TIME. 13

the noble mansions of Greece and Rome. It marked the time of the masterly eloquence of the ancients, long before the days of the Apostles, for Aristotle, Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero and Pliny speak of the little vessel of dropping water which marked the passing time for these master minds of these olden days. Such was the thing used in the early days of the Christian church to mark the passing hours, even to the ninth century, for we read of one sent to the great Charlemagne as a beautiful gift from the Caliph al Rasched. The hour-glass, early in the Church, took the place of the water glass ; but we know not the maker or the date, but we know that it was used till lately, and even now it can be found but only as a toy. They sometimes marked the time by the burning of a candle ; and we read of the celebrated one of Alfred the Great, and how by it he divided the day into three parts, one for his religious duties, one for public matters, and the third for sleep. Who made the first clock we know not, some say Boethius, the great Catholic philosopher of the early Church ; x some say Wallingford, the abbot and superior of the monastery of St. Albans ; 2 others, Gerbert, when Archbishop of Magdeburg, who afterwards became Pope Sylvester II. ; 3 but we are told by the early writers that in the eleventh century the clock was found in all the monasteries and the convents of Europe, when the tinkling bells of the great clock standing in the halls of the religious houses called the monks and nuns to their prayers, and the tolling of the great bells of the church towers told the people of passing time, or warned them of the hour of mass, or of the moment of the raising of the Host. In the early days the priests brought the clock to England, and the great church of Westminster and the cathedrals of Exeter, of Wells, of Canterbury, and of Peterborough, soon had their clocks to ring out the time for the Catholics of England long before the Reformation (about 1326).

I. — The Houe.

We must first speak of the different parts into which in modern times the hour is divided.

The second is the sixtieth part of a minute, and is the smallest part of time among English speaking people.

1 510. 8 1326. 3 996.

li THE SECOND, MINUTE AND HOUE.

We find no mark of the second in nature. It is only since clocks and watches were improved that they began to put in second dials.

Before that time they called small parts of time moments and instants, 1 which were not fixed in length. Now the second is still more divided into halves, thirds, and quarters, while by the wonderful improvements used in observatories, by electricity, and the transit, with its many spider-webs stretched across the field of vision, the time of the passing of a star can be told to the hundredth part of a second.

The minute is the sixtieth part of an hour. The name minute comes from the Latin, meaning little. We find no mention of the minute in ancient times. Without doubt it was first used when clocks and watches began to measure time, it being so natural to mark the dial off into twelve equal figures, and each figure into five spaces. The sun-dial of the ancients may have been marked the same way, but the earth not moving around the sun at all times with equal quickness, the length of the days will vary sometimes sixteen minutes during the year when marked by a sun-dial.

The hour is the twenty-fourth part of the day.

From the earliest ages they marked the passing time by dividing the day from sunrise to sunset into twelve equal parts called hours, 2 from the Latin and Greek meaning a part of the day. With them the first hour began at sunrise, and the twelfth ended at sundown. But as the time of sunrise and sunset are not the same at all times of the year, only in the spring and fall, when the days and nights have an equal length, were the hours of the ancients alike.

Of the times when the day was thus divided, history is silent. We know the Jews thus counted time, from many parts of the Bible. One writer, Herodotus, says it was used by the Greeks, who learned the custom from the ancient Babylonians, the most advanced in the knowledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies. Another, Wilkinson, thinks the early Egyptians separated both the day and night into twelve hours. Although the Romans divided the day into twelve hours, as early as history

1 Durondus, Rationale Div. 4. viii. c. v, n. 4. 2 Polyd. Virgil, lii. c. 5.

HOURS OF THE DAY. 16

goes back, they did not thus count the hours of the night till the times of the Punic wars.

We count the hours from twelve at midnight till twelve at noon, and from that till midnight again, a custom we learned from the ancient Egyptians, while the astronomers begin at noon and count twenty-four hours till the next noon. In Borne they count twenty-four hours, beginning at sunset. 1 The Chinese beginning at midnight count twelve hours till the next midnight, one of their hours being equal to two of ours.

From the traditions of the past we learn that Christ was delivered to the Komans the first hour of the day, 2 the third he was scourged, 3 the sixth crucified, 4 the ninth he died, the eleventh his body was taken down from the cross, and the twelfth laid in the tomb. 5 In the early ages of the church they divided the hour into the point, moment, unce, and atom. The point was the fourth part of the hour, and was like our quarters. The point had ten moments, the moment ten unces, while the unce was made up of forty-seven atoms.

From the times of the Apostles the clergy recited the offices of the breviary, which are called the holy hours. They do not correspond to the hours of the day, but as they were said at regular times, both at night as well as in the day, they took the place of the hours for thd clergy before the times of clocks and watches ; hence they are called the hours of the breviary.

IL— The Day.

The day is the time measured by the turning around of the earth, or the time when one-half of the earth is lighted up by the rays of the sun, and then when the same half is again clothed in darkness till the sun rises again in the east. It is made up of twenty-four hours. That is the natural day. The day then is found in nature. The name, day, comes from the customs of the ancient Romans, who set apart a day of the year for each of their false gods ; or again, it comes from the old Greek word meaning two, for thus the sons of ancient Athens called the day and night. As the earth moves around the sun

1 Holy Week in the Vatican, by Pope, p. 2. 2 John xviii. 28. 3 Mark xv. 15.

4 John six. 14. 5 Durand Rat. Div. L. V. C. I. n. 6.

16 NAMES OF DIFFERENT DAYS.

in the form of an oval, and not with the same speed at all times of the year, watching the movements of the sun in thesky is not a good way of measuring the day, but the average of all the days of the year, measured by the earth going around the sun, is the common day among all nations.

As the fixed stars are so far away that the movement of the earth around the sun is like nothing compared to their distance, the time when a star is in a place in the heavens, and the time when it comes to that point again, is the true time of the turning of the earth, and is called the astronomical day. Since the time of Ptolemy, astronomers begin at noon and count the hours from one to twenty-four, their day being three minutes and fifty-six seconds shorter than the common day.

When the dog-star is in the sky in summer, they are called the dog days. When the sun appears not to move to the north or south in spring and fall, they are called the equinoctial days. When the kings of olden times went out to war, they were called the fighting days. When the forerunner of our Lord was preaching penance on the banks of the Jordan, they were called penance days. When now the children of our church do penance for their sins, they are called fast days. When the church celebrates the feast and the memory of the resurrection of our Lord, they are cfalled Sundays. W^hen we keep the services of the church and celebrate the memory of our Lord, the Holy Virgin, and the Saints, they are called feast days. When the people return again to their work during the week, they are called week days. At length, when the Lord will come in glory to judge mankind, it is called the last day.

The word day again means the space of time when the sun shines on our part of the globe ; the part lighted up is day, while the part in darkness is night. The days and nights are the same at the equator, but become longer or shorter as we go north or south, till at the poles the days and nights are nearly six months in length, the day being a little longer in both cases, because the light is turned out of its course by the air through which it passes before reaching the earth.

The day is also made up of three -psnts — morning, noon and night; 1 but the beginning or the ending of

1 Isidore.

18 DIVISIONS OF THE DAY.

these parts of the day are not closely marked. The word morning comes from an old word of northern Europe, and means the early hours of the day. Noon comes from the Latin, and was the hour at which the Romans took their chief meal at three in the afternoon ; and as in these latter times we take our midday meal at noon, we call it noon. Evening comes from the old Teutonic word signifying declining, and means the going down of the sun, or the calmness of the declining day, and such is its meaning now.

The clergy of olden times, under the inspiration of the Catholic Church, divided the night into seven parts. They had the Yesper time, for when the evening star " Vespera " looked down so brightly from the sky, the early Christians sang the Vespers — the psalms of praises to the Lord. They had the twilight hour, when they said their evening prayers, when the clergy read the compline. They had the crepuscule, when they retired to their couches. They had the corticine, when all dropped into sleep. They had the midnight, when all was silent, as they had no lights as we have now ; the silent night was then in the midst of its course. They had the galicine, when the crow of the cock waked the stillness of their slumbers. They had their matin, when the clergy rose to say or sing in common the matins of the breviary. They had the delicule, 1 when the faint rays of the hidden sun told of the coming day. They had the aurora, when the splendors of the breaking light waked the world with the brightness of the sun, the coming king of day.

Again, following the customs of the Jews, the early Christians divided the time of daylight into four parts : They had the first hour at six in the morning, when their work began, when the clergy recited Prime from the holy office. They had the third hour, when the sun had risen midway toward the highest heavens, when the clergy said Terce. They had the sixth hour at noon, when they had the Office of Sext, while, when the orb of day had gone half way down the western sky, they finished the Little Hours by saying None. Thus in the infancy of the Church was the day devoted to God by the

J See S, Aug. Ser. ccxxi., in Vig. Pasch,

CONSECRATED HOURS. 19

early saints and martyrs of old, amid the persecutions of the pagan nations when our fathers kept the faith.

But do you think we changed ? The same has ever since been carried on by the clergy of the Church. The seven Offices of the Breviary are divided now as in these olden times of martyrs and of saints, for we never change. Matins must be said in the morning, or the day before, by a special favor of the Holy See ; Prime and Terce before noon, unless the reciter has a reason ; Vespers in the afternoon ; but in times of penance, as in Lent, before noon, because, in ancient times, they fasted till the evening, and then they said Vespers, and under the beaming light of the evening star the early Christians broke their fast. Thus we still renew those ancient days of holiness and of saints. We consecrate the hours of the day to Him who came and prayed to His heavenly Father during the hours of the day, and spent whole nights in communion with His Father.

The Jews, beginning the day at sundown, divided it into three series of times : the major hours, the minor hours, and the hours of prayer. The major hours began at six in the morning, and divided the day from morn to eve into four equal hours ; x the minor hours began at six, and divide the day into twelve equal hours as we do now. 2 Thus, when we know these two ancient ways of counting the hours, we find there is no trouble between the Gospel of St. Mark, where he says, "And it was the third hour and they crucified Him," 3 for he followed the major way of counting the hours ; and the words of St. John, who says, " And it was the paras ceve of the pasch, about the sixth hour," 1 for he followed the minor way of counting the hours. Our Lord, then, was scourged at nine in the morning, crucified at noon, and died at three in the afternoon. The hours of prayer, or as they were called by the Jews, the hours of the temple, were the third hour at nine in the morning, the sixth hour at noon, and the ninth hour at three in the afternoon, when, by the silver trumpets of the temple at Jerusalem, they were called to the services of the law of Moses.