Lenten traditions
rhubarb
Shipmate
I was very surprised at the altered Lenten traditions from what we normally observe at our church. Our minister had decided what hymns were appropriate at last week's service and I was stunned to find each one contained Alleluias, as normally they are omitted in Lent. Have the rules been altered?
An even greater surprise was his announcement at the end of the service that we don't finish with a blessing during Lent. There was a shocked silence in the congregation and we all looked at each other in bemusement. Have we been doing the wrong thing for years or is he just strange?
An even greater surprise was his announcement at the end of the service that we don't finish with a blessing during Lent. There was a shocked silence in the congregation and we all looked at each other in bemusement. Have we been doing the wrong thing for years or is he just strange?
Comments
It might be an idea to ask your minister about the rationale for their decision. They may have a theological reason or they may not be aware of the custom or don't consider it important.
Having said that, I agree that it seems odd to say that a service shouldn't end with a blessing during Lent.
Of course (says he, thinking aloud), Lent itself is a tradition: it wasn't mandated by Jesus and it's not in the Bible.
Confused is another possibility. In many Western liturgies, there is traditionally no blessing at the end of the liturgies for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, because they, along with the Easter Vigil, are seen as essentially one liturgy. “To be continued . . . ,” as it were.
Perhaps he’s taken that further than intended, or misunderstood that.
I agree with @Gamma Gamaliel. Ask him.
Which is itself a comment coming from within a tradition ... 😉
Where do you think the Bible came from?
It emerged from traditions current within the early Church.
But that's a matter for another thread.
Of course traditions are 'just' traditions and aren't 'rules' as such but supposedly having no rigid rules is just as much a traditions as having fixed rules for things.
Guitars aren't mandated by Jesus and aren't in the Bible. Neither are organs or hymn-prayer-sandwich formats or clerical garb or stained glass or flowers to decorate churches or ...
Which doesn't mean we shouldn't use any of those things.
Besides, whilst the Church isn't Jesus it is His Body, so we have to be careful lest we dislocate Christ from his Church. We don't want a beheaded Body.
But it'd take a lot of space and pixels to unpack all of that.
The way you practice your tradition is an invention of man ...
The way we practice ours ...
Etc etc etc
Most rules are, in effect, formalized traditions. The step from "we always do it this way" to "we are going to write down that we do it this way" is a fairly small one. That's quite a different statement from "it only works if we do it this way", which is a statement that we are only very rarely capable of making. "We know (or at least believe) that it works if we do it this way, and we don't know what happens if we do something else" is often a more reasonable statement to make.
To file alongside your own Caissa-created clap-trap ...
One person's fish is someone else's poisson.
'When in Rome ...' and all that.
I think there is a difference between blindly observing each and any tradition for the sake of it and respectfully observing it even if it doesn't accord with one's own personal views.
I wouldn't have barged into an Anglo-Catholic or Orthodox service waving my arms around and speaking in tongues or prophesying in my full-on charismatic evangelical days any more than I would now ostentatiously cross myself and make protrastions if I visited a Baptist church or a Brethren assembly.
It's all about context.
If a particular tradition doesn't include 'allelulias' in its liturgies during Lent then I'd respect that, evn though my own Big T Tradition doesn't have a problem with including them.
All this, as has been said before, contrasts with, and adds to, the joy of the Easter celebration when that day arrives. I know that many other Places, of varying churchmanship, also follow these traditions, and are none the worse for them.
OTOH, we do go a bit over the top for the last two weeks of Lent, as Madam Sacristan insists on black or purple veils being thrown over just about every picture, crucifix, and image in the church, the work occupying at least a couple of hours after tomorrow's 10am Mass.
The *Veiling Saturday* task involves people going up dangerously long ladders to put enormous purple veils over the four large oil paintings we possess (all, bar one, IMHO useless Tat), along with the reredos/War Memorial in the All Souls chapel, and smaller pieces of cloth (all duly marked as to which image they should cover) on the other pieces of Tat. Some of the latter also involve climbing onto a wobbly stepladder...
Now, I can never see the point of all this, as the result is seen only by a small number of people between Lent 5 and Good Friday - the Sunday congregations, and the half-dozen or so who attend during the week. I've noticed that, in some Places with much less Tat, it's only the crucifixes and the processional cross which are veiled, which IMHO emphasises the cross. That seems quite appropriate, as Holy Week and Good Friday approach.
Does your Place indulge in this orgy of veiling, most of which is (in our case) assuredly a Health and Safety risk?
My point was simply that in some cases, those traditions are rules.
Right, but there's a difference between a law of nature: the rules by which the universe operates, and laws created by humans, which are rules created by some kind of collective choice.
The second kind aren't fundamental. They just mean that the collective "we" has chosen that we ought to do something in some particular way. I really don't think there's a difference between them and tradition.
Sure. A lot depends on the motivation, of course.
I'm thinking Rik Mayal in 'The Young Ones.'
'Just think what the local Anarchist Group will say when they hear about this ... "People Who Don’t Pay Their TV Licences Against The Nazis" ... !'
However, back to the OP, I wonder if the vicar has got slightly confused. In places that keep the Triduum, such as St Obscures, at the end of the first two "services", there is no blessing. This is simply because there are not three services but one service that is broken into three parts. So the service that starts with the Washing of feet on Maundy Thursday ends with the blessing at the end of the Mass of Easter (often) on Holy Saturday. If they had come across this and thought that this applied to the whole of Lent then it would at least be a half sensible explanation.
Tradition is important but it is also hugely variable and living thing. To simply saying this is right with respect to tradition without codicils is nearly always wrong. We veiled everything today but there was not scaffolding and we are moving to a better way of veiling the rood.
I'm still not clear as to the rationale of veiling just about everything else, though I agree that it alters the feel of the church. Having so much awful Tat (in our case) out of sight for a couple of weeks is a distinct improvement!
Our RC place doesn't veil, and hasn't in the 30 years I have been a member. Don't know any RC places that do apart from the local Tridentine place.
Nenya - Ecclesiantics Host
I'll check that out. I'm glad someone's started one on that theme as I was thinking of doing so.
Meanwhile, on Lenten traditions... ours can be quite peculiar and @Ex_Organist can no doubt explain things better than I can, but for some reason things turn 'upside down' as we approach Holy Week with Vespers in the morning and Matins in the evening and everything topsy-turvy.
I love the Holy Week services though.
Not "topsy-turvy", just half a day ahead. Vespers in late morning, rather than late afternoon, mainly to shorten the fast before the Communion which is attached in the Pre-sanctified Liturgy (and in the full Liturgies on Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday.. In parishes, Matins done the evening before rather than expecting people to be like monks and get to church at 2.00 or 3.00 a.m.
The same practice was common in the Western Church. Tenebrae is Matins perfomed usually on the previous evening, with the peculiarity that progressively extinguishing candles, which originally came with the increasing light of dawn, has now been reinterpreted to explain why it leaves the church in darkness at the end of the service.
One which has not so far met with much success this Lent has been the Friday evening Stations Of The Cross. Some people who used to attend each week are now either dead or too infirm, and only FatherInCharge was present at the service a week ago yesterday.
The pictures themselves are of some interest, being Edwardian prints probably bought when the church was built, but they have not been well looked after, and could do with re-mounting and re-framing.
That would be an expensive job, and the cost couldn't really be justified, given the poverty of our parish, and the PCC's desire to spend what little £££ we have on service to the community as a whole.
Nah, it's due to Protestants over-reacting to any hint of tradition / Tradition... 😉
I think I knew what you were driving at, but it's equally true I think that 'traditional habits' can become Big T Tradition over time.
I don't have a problem with that, although there is some material within Big T Tradition I'd like to see edited or amended.
It can be hard to tell at times when a framework becomes a straitjacket and that will vary according to context of course.
As regards the Lenten traditions of both East and West, as it were, I'd see them as complementary rather than in opposition to each other.
On traditions in general at a local level, I remember visiting an Anglo-Catholic parish in South Wales when the parish priest was on holiday and they has a stand-in who wasn't quite the martinet he was rumoured to be. The congregation seemed at a loss as the visiting priest didn't marshal them into shape and order them around with military precision as the usual incumbent did.
The result seemed to be a mix of fear and relief - fear that they might teeter on the brink of liturgical disaster without the usual guy there to keep them on track and relief that things were more relaxed for a change.
There's a balance in there somewhere.
If you go into more detail it does get more confusing. Normally the liturgical day begins with Vespers, with the commemoration being carried through to Matins next day. For Monday to Thursday in Holy Week the new theme begins at Matins, with some of the variable texts being repeated at the following Vespers, and those texts frequently referring to the Gospel passage read at Vespers, rather than to that read at Matins.
They aren't proscribed in the Byzantine Rite (where in fact they are increased during Lent) but this is not the only Orthodox custom. The proscription of the Alleluia is very ancient in the West and is observed by a number of Orthodox communities of western tradition today.
Christ is Risen!
(I resurface occasionally.
'Christ is Risen indeed!
And Cyprian has resurfaced!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!'
It's like the Ethiopian umbrellas.
They start out as something to keep the sun off and then they become A Thing, a Liturgical Thing.
Come on, if we can have 'Let all catechumens depart!' even though they are no longer expected to do so, then surely we can have 'Cyprian / Fred / Doris / delete as appropriate / has Resurfaced!'
As a broader and less Lenten aside, we do have bas-reliefs but don't generally do statuary.
I must admit some forms of RC and Anglo-Catholic statuary freak me out, particularly the former in Spain and Portugal where they clothe them. Aieeeee!
But each to their own.
I've seen some very moving examples of RC sculpture though.
As @Bishops Finger says upthread, some tat deserves to be veiled. But then, at Easter is it unveiled with a 'Ta-Dah!!!'
Try visiting a Cypriot church.
I've often wondered about that, too!
Uh-oh! I stand corrected and not in a way I'd anticipated ...
* somewhat see-through, not thick...
I'm in an Antiochian parish and have never noticed that ... but then liturgical actions/decorations also pass me by too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBJ8k_i99RM
*Except for the Stations of the Cross, which are used every Friday in Lent - including Good Friday - for a short devotional service, and (obviously) need to be visible.
One of the great Anglo Catholic shrine communities (no longer with us in quite the same way) where I used to go on Holy Week retreat used to veil from the Mass of the Passion through to just before the First Mass of Easter (midnight of Saturday/Sunday).
Their argument was that between those two masses God is dead, so we must cover everything as without God there is no point.
Which is fairly hardline…
God is dead?
Did someone tell him?
Fixed coding - Nenya, Ecclesiantics Host