WDTPRS: Quinquagesima

We now reach the final Sunday before Lent begins with Ash Wednesday only days away. It is Quinquagesima Sunday--50 days before Easter (in a figurative sense). Father Z. on WDTPRS has the complete story and some interesting sidelights.

In these WDTPRS articles we are this year focusing on the prayer of the 1962 Missale Romanum rather than those of the Novus Ordo as we have done for the last seven years: in the wake of the monumental Summorum Pontificum, in keeping with Pope Benedict’s plan and a “hermeneutic of continuity”, we are drilling into the traditional prayers to understand what in them may be different and similar to how we pray in the Novus Ordo. Thus, if we ask the question “What Does The Prayer Really Say?” of prayers for individual Masses, we must also ask that question of the very way that the prayer is physically oriented. What does it mean to pray ad orientem or versus populum? Why is this important to every Catholic and every priest in every parish?

The great German liturgist, the late Msgr. Klaus Gamber, who so influenced great liturgical theologians such as Joseph Ratzinger, thought that the single greatest damaging change in the post-Conciliar reform was the turning around of altars. This makes perfect sense. In the posthumous compilation entitled The Reform of the Liturgy (Roman Catholic Books, 1993) Gamber states:

Liturgy and faith are interdependent. This is why a new rite was created, a rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology. The traditional liturgy simply could not be allowed to exist in its established form because it was permeated with the truths of the traditional faith and the ancient forms of piety. For this reason alone, much was abolished and new rites, prayers and hymns were introduced, as were the new readings from Scripture, which conveniently left out those passages that did not square with the teachings of modern theology—for example, references to a God who judges and punishes. (p. 100)

IT IS A MUST READ as always!