27 April 2009
A Displacement?
I have wondered for years if there is a displacement involved in the Collects for Easter. You see, this past Sunday we celebrated Good Shepherd (Misericordias Domini) and the collect asked that God's people, rescued from the danger of eternal death, be given "perpetual gladness and eternal joys." But this coming Sunday is Jubilate - and joy rings through the readings indeed, culminating in our Lord's words in the Gospel: "and your joy no one will take from you." And yet the collect is rather out of tune, asking that all who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ's church be given faithfulness "to avoid whatever is contrary to their confession." Anyone know the scoop on this? Was the collect (which in the Gelasian Sacramentary is attached to the first Sunday outside the Easter Octave) ever attached to Jubilate rather than Misericordias Domini?
On first glance, the Jubilate collect seems to be introducing the Epistle.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. But it seems out of synch with the Gospel; while the previous week's collect seems in synch with the Gospel for Jubilate.
ReplyDeleteCould it be because the three year pericopes celebrate Good Sheperd Sunday this coming Lord's Day (May 3) instead of yesterday?
ReplyDeleteOur Gospel text was Luke 24:20-39, while next week's is from John...
F.V.
I don't have the details to hand, but I remember, vaguely, from reading Dix, Willis and Jungmann that there was a one-week displacement of collects etc., in some recensions of the Roman Rite by the late Middle Ages. I seem to recall that they involved Sundays after Trinity. I also have a recollection that if one compares the collects in Anglican rites from Cranmer onwards with those in the Swedish post-Reformation rites (the Danes/Norwegians eventually discarded the "traditional" collects for Veit Dietrich's compositions) there is a week's variance between them for part of the liturgical year as well.
ReplyDeleteAnd here I thought we'd be going on about the oddity of the word "miserecordias" again this year!
ReplyDeleteMy recollection is similar to Dr Tighe's, and similarly vague. But that fits -- the early situation was vague too, with a certain fluidity as to what was introduced where and when, or modified for later introductions.
On the bright side, though, the collects as we have them do not seem out of place: what does a good shepherd do but deliver his sheep from danger to safety for which they are joyful, and what joyful sheep does not encounter the trials and even persecutions of this life, which the Gospel mentions too quite as much as the joy, precisely because they are as it were the labour pains before the final Coming of the Lord!
Not to mention this is the second time this year Dr Tighe and I agree on something, a jubilate all its own!
Sarum inserts an extra set of collects at Trinity III, and then are a week behind the old Roman/Lutheran series. During the same time, Rome and the German Lutherans find themselves a week apart on the Gospels, and I think the Alleluias as well.
ReplyDeleteAs for Misericordias and Jubilate, the Sarum Missal gives the same collects, in the same places.