Liturgical Strata

If you’ve ever visited the Grand Canyon (I have not yet), I’m told that there are explanations of the various strata on display in the layered effect of the rock. Each one, supposedly, bears record to a different era of the earth’s history.

At yesterday’s Divine Service I was reminded that this holds true even for the holy liturgy. The liturgical movement of the 20th century sought to renew in the Church an earlier patristic idea of Easter itself stretching through all 50 days up to Pentecost (I think even to this day the liturgical appointments for Easter season in the Eastern liturgical books are called the Pentecostarion). And this showed even in the way the Sundays might be referred to: is this Sunday the Second Sunday OF Easter or the First Sunday AFTER Easter?

The old collect (whose origins are Gregorian; see Reed’s The Lutheran Liturgy, p. 509) for the day began with this line: “Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we who HAVE CELEBRATED the solemnities of the Lord’s resurrection....” Our new rite is (sadly, but predictably) allergic to anything approaching the glory of “solemnities” so it is reduced to: “Almighty God, grant that we who HAVE CELEBRATED the Lord’s resurrection.” What both confess, though, is that the origin of this collect was at a time when Easter already on Quasimodogeniti was regarded as a past celebration. Well, more accurately if you leave solemnities in there, past celebrations. For of course, there was at least Vigil and Easter Mass, and then the services upon Easter Monday and Tuesday. These were all “solemnities” in which the Church’s Easter joy stretched out beyond the single day. But by THIS Sunday, we’re looking backwards at Easter and praying either (in the old collect) that “by the help of Thy grace” we may “bring forth the fruits thereof in our life and conversation” or in the new collect (with a nod to St. Thomas) that we “may by Your grace confess in our life and conversation that Jesus is Lord and God.” Backwards, not “ongoing” then. 

It’s not that the 50 days of Easter are wrong. But it’s that the liturgy has strata that arise at times when different understandings surface and lead to “adjustments.” We’ll notice the same thing come Ascension with the perennial question of what on earth to do with the Paschal Candle? Traditionally, snuffed out during the Ascension liturgy. But then there’s ANOTHER Sunday of the 50 days just waiting: the SEVENTH Sunday OF Easter, which in the old days (well, at least from middle ages onward) was just “Sunday after the Ascension” or Exaudi (from the Introit). 

Layers of liturgical strata: there are actually numerous instances, but this one was sort of in my face assisting in the Mass last evening. Still, I’m happily confessing: Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!