Several folks have written asking what exactly should happen this year with Epiphany being such a short season. Here is my best reading of the material provided in Lutheran Service Book for those who are observing the one year (historic) lectionary:
January 6 - celebrate the Epiphany of our Lord
January 13 - celebrate the Baptism of our Lord (in the historic practice of the Western Church the Baptism is the octave after the Epiphany and so would trump the readings for First Sunday after Epiphany)
Transfiguration? - celebrate it at a midweek liturgy after January 13th
January 20 - celebrate Septuagesima, first Sunday of pre-Lent
January 27 - celebrate Sexagesima, second Sunday of pre-Lent
February 3 - celebrate Quinquagesima, third Sunday of pre-Lent
On other matters: LSB prescribes white for both Epiphany and Baptism and then Green for Gesimatide. The alleluia is omitted during Gesimatide, replaced by the Tract. LSB does not indicate dropping the Gloria in Excelsis, however, until Lent itself. Additionally, LSB prescribes the Epiphany preface throughout the Gesima Sundays. If I missed any rubrics in LSB, I'd appreciate correction. It certainly is an unusual year with an almost non-existent Epiphany season!
18 comments:
I am preaching on Epiphany Sunday. My Bishop is insistant that in this liturgical cycle we preach on the Epistle rather than the Gospel. This makes little sense to me. I want to talk about the Epiphany, after all it is the actual feast day.
Is this a universal convention or just a LCiGB abberation?
I'm liturgy impaired. Why do we omit the Gloria. I like the Gloria. I missed it during Advent. I missed it a LOT. Is this one of those "penitent season" things? After Lent, are there any other times where it will be omitted for weeks at a time?
Do you use the 1 year lectionary or the 3 year?
Doorman,
The custom in Lutheran Churches is to preach the Gospel for the Divine Service. Now, what you can do to be obedient and yet preach on the Gospel is to preach on BOTH or even all three for the Feast! Such is something I do quite frequently. If you begin and end with the
Epistle, he'll likely count it as being ON the Epistle. Just toss Isaiah and Matthew in the middle! :)
Jenn,
The Gloria is a festive element of the service and is not used during the seasons of penitence to mark them as such. And wait till you get the weeks of being deprived of singing Alleluia. By the time it comes back, you are simply ACHING to sing it! If you google Weedon Kretzmann Allelulia, I think you'll get a posting of Kretzmann's that explains it a bit, and the same thought runs behind the loss of the Gloria, and its joyous return.
Sadly there won't be uniformity among one year's. At Zion they'll have the Sunday after Epiphany. I agree it should be the Baptism of our Lord. If I recall, Luther complained that this feast was already scarcely remembered during his time. After that will be the gesimas, with violet (I presume), no Gloria, no Alleluia (Tract instead). I presume no flowers, but veils won't come in until at least Ash Wednesday, if not Judica (Sunday before Palm Sunday).
I forgot to mention that the pre-Vatican II missals do state that if the Octave falls on Sunday, the Mass of the Sunday after Epiphany is said. I can't remember if the Octave is commemorated or not, and I don't have a missal with me currently.
Brian,
Zion still uses TLH, doesn't it? In that case, they are conforming in every particular detail to what the *The Lutheran Liturgy* (old Altar book) prescribes. That includes observing the Sunday after Epiphany, for the old Lutheran lectionary didn't observe the octave feast of Epiphany as Baptism.
What is interesting to me is the debate on the colors for Gesimatide. I have an older edition of *The Lutheran Liturgy* and it prescribes Green for Gesimatide. Fr. Fenton some years ago pointed out to me that there are two editions of this book, however, with some changes in them. The last edition, which prescribes that any conflicts with other editions of Lutheran liturgical books be solved by following ITS prescriptions, uses the violet for Gesimatide.
I always note that I need fasts right when they arrive. It's as if I have let the house get just too messy. The vagaries of the Revised Julian calendar and the Byzantine Rite itself always seem to match up with my clutter. So, I am assuming that God in His foreknowledge knew I was going to have been especially wicked and cluttered around now - which is true, unfortunately; God cannot lie - and He knew I'd need almost no time off between the Nativity and Lenten Fasts.
Oh, Jen, I forgot to answer the second part:
the Gloria in Excelsis is omitted among us only during Lent and Advent. So ten or so times out of the 52! At St. Paul's we use the 1-year, though I like to call it what it is: the historic lectionary [at least of the Western Church]. :)
Christopher,
That is SOOOO true.
TLH yes. Whether that matters, I don't know. I haven't heard the Kantor mention TLH for a matter like this. He'd be more likely to reference a Missal I think.
Fr. Weedon,
I know you don't want to hear this and you will probably think that I'm just being a jerk, but at least some of the problems with such a short Epiphany (Theophany) season would be solved if the LCMS would just observe the Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6, its historical observation. Just an observation.
Moving Transfiguration to August was precisely because it interfered with the busier Lenten season (espcially when there is an early Pascha). The simply placed is the same number of weeks prior to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14 in place of the biblical number of weeks prior to Good Friday (the Feast of the Cross par excellence). [There may also have been the dedication of a special church to the Transfiguration (on Tabor?) on the same date, which is also celebrated. In the Eastern Church there are a number of church dedications that are celebrated on the church calendar.]
Christopher,
LOL. It would indeed be solved that way. That is how some Lutherans observe the day also. It's the Swedish practice (remember in Hammer of God?). For me, I still think that Veit Dietrich's move of Transfiguration into Epiphany as the crowning of that season was a brilliant liturgical intuition.
We haven't gotten that far in Stengrunden yet in field ed this quarter; you've given me something to look forward to.
The problem with Dietrich's move is two-fold. You lose the Mass of the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (but that would be done during the week), and you forget that the Church has traditionally celebrated the Transfiguration on the Lenten Ember Saturday. Hey, I know, we could celebrate it three times a year!
Speaking of Dietrich, is there more of his collect series (translated in The Lutheran Hymnary) than what is posted here (thanks to LCR spin-off OLCCIC)? http://olcc.us/resources/dietrich-collects
In the traditional Roman liturgy, from the Gesimas to Holy Saturday purple is used throughout (Laetare excepted) and the Alleluia, Te Deum and Gloria are omitted.
Prior to this, 1 January is the Circumcision, 2 January or the Sunday between The Circumcision and The Epiphany if there is one is The Baptism of the Lord, 6 January The Epiphany, the Sunday within the Octave of The Epiphany The Feast of the Holy Family, which the last Benedict (XV) ordered to always be on that Sunday, so if EpiphAny falls on a Sunday the Mass for the Sunday within the Octave is said the following Saturday. All are in white. Then green is used for the Sundays after Epiphany (which, the first one being within the Octave, starts with the Second Sunday After Epiphany, but that ends with Septuagesima which begins Lenten purple.
I understand the relocation of the Transfiguration does place it more in line with the time line of Jesus' life. However, time has added new significance to the 6 August traditional date. When I used to observe it that day, it always shook me that in modern times this became the date of another kind of transfiguration -- Hiroshima -- which seemed to say, look, you're going to have a transfiguration, now, you want it God's way or Man's.
Our Vatican II For Lutherans version of the novus ordo calendar and lectionary of course disconnects with this
Just to note, though, Terry, that the use of Green for Gesimatide was prescribed in the Common Service for Lutherans, well before V II, and I assume based on Northern European practices that predate Trent (much of the Common Service reflects pre-Trent codification). Though for that matter, the color scheme tended to vary wildly in those days - quite illuminating to read Stiller's *J.S. Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig*!
No disagreement from me!
I should have said "Tridentine" rather than "traditional". That's an RC hangover on my part, where in many circles they mean the same thing -- a "traditional" Catholic is one who holds to the Tridentine rite and everything else, where a "conservative" Catholic is one who holds to what the documents, as opposed to the "spirit", of Vatican II say.
When I first read the BOC, it struck me that this was written BEFORE Trent, therefore before the version of the Roman liturgy I knew growing up, which was therefore not for them the universal way things were as I knew them. Along the way it has been my pleasure to discover the pre-Trent nature of Lutheran liturgy, all of which makes me appreciate "Lutheranism" as the true catholic faith all the more. Which, I might add, has also made my conviction that our forays into Vatican II wannabeism are lamentable at best and dangerous at worst stronger and stronger.
At any rate, my intent in the previous comment was to lay out the Tridentine usage.
January 2 for the Baptism? Perhaps you mean Holy Name? The Baptism is on Jan. 13, Epiphany's Octave, from what I've seen.
I find it hard to believe that green would have been used in the north during the gesimas, due to the Lenten propers (Tract, et al.)
Yes, you are right, I meant to say Holy Name, not Baptism.
When I post comments it is usually either very late or very early, while doing something else like laundry (like now) and from memory, so I do have my lapses. It's the only time when I remember with fondness having my own office library, the school's library and a graduate assistant!
I do check my posts to my own blog, though, which I hope does not seem like a ridiculously transparent attempt to increase my readership.
The Feast of the Holy Family is hard to crowd in, since there already is a Mass for the Sunday within the Octave of the Epiphany, and the Baptism is as you say on the Octave itself. But the last Benedict wanted it always to be on a Sunday, so there you are.
Which brings up a point to complement Pastor's helpful reminder that Trent is after and not before the Reformers. Things didn't stay in all details just as they were after Trent until Vatican II either. While nothing like the horrendous hatchet job the novus ordo in its liturgies, calendar and lectionary is, the Benedict decree re Holy Family is typical. And I'm old enough to remember when having a Communion service on Good Friday was considered a recent innovation that lessened the character of both Maundy (now Holy) Thursday and Good Friday.
The Tridentine Rite as it is now is really from 1962, largely the work of The Bugman (Bugnini) who was to top that with the bogus, er, novus ordo to follow, and now that after 37 years of official non-existence it has been rehabilitated as the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, theoretically it is subject to further revision here and there. The sources I have come from the period immediately before the now typical 1962 editions.
You might find it interesting to hear the take we were taught in those days. No attention was paid to pre Trent Western liturgy, because the idea was the Reformers were actually right about this, that there was widespread abuse and laxity the should not have been allowed to happen, however, the real reformation was not the Reformation, which more properly should be called the Protestant Revolt, but rather, reformation being the work of the church and not renegades from it, the real reformation was Trent, which among its many glories standardised liturgy for the Western Rite so that the intent of the church would be everywhere expressed.
Within ten years, the story was completely different. Trent was a blind alley of late mediaeval triumphalism, stifling the diverse experience of the community for a reactionary straight jacket to counter the Reformers, from which we should now free ourselves at long last in the new mass and calendar and lectionary for a new age going forward. We were, however, taught a deep respect for the Eastern liturgies as the more ancient, and equally valid, with echoes in our own.
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