In the season after Epiphany, the texts of the Matins responsories are all taken from the book of Psalms, rather than from the Epistles of St Paul with which they are read. This group of responsories is unusual in that there are separate ones for each day of the week (a total of 24 originally), where normally, there are between 8-12, enough to occupy Sunday, often Monday, and sometimes Tuesday ..read more

This is the third part of my response to a video by Dr Brant Pitre of the Augustine Institute on the subject of popular participation in the Mass. In the previous part, I explained the errors of his claims about the nature of the Roman stational Masses, and of an ancient document which describes them, and then, the erroneous contrast which he draws between them and the Masses celebrated in the ..read more

The feast of St Peter’s Chair was originally kept on one of two dates. Some sources, going back to the fourth century, attest to it on January 18th, among them, an ancient Martyrology formerly attributed to St. Jerome. Others place it on February 22nd, such as the Philocalian Calendar, which contains an equally ancient list of liturgical celebrations. It is not at all clear why exactly the same ..read more

One of the most famous late medieval depictions of the Crucifixion is the central panel of the Isenheim altarpiece, painted by the German artist Matthias Grünewald (1470 ca. - 1528) between 1512-16. I call this work “late medieval” despite its date, because Grünewald completely ignores the elegant stylizations of his Italian Renaissance contemporaries, and shows us the reality of Our Lord’s ..read more

Lost in Translation #117 After offering the host, the priest prepares the next gift by pouring wine into the chalice, and water into the wine. In addition to remaining faithful to the customs of the Jews in the Holy Land at the time of the Last Supper (not to mention the Romans and Greeks), the admixture of water and wine symbolizes the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the ..read more

Our thanks to reader Gian Marco Talluto for sharing with us these pictures of the ordination of a bishop in the Byzantine Rite, which took place in Sicily on this day in 1938. Giuseppe Perniciaro was born in Mezzojuso, in the province of Palermo, Sicily, on January 11, 1907. After studying at the Greek-Albanian Seminary in Palermo, he was a student at the Pontifical Greek College in Rome, where ..read more

Abbot Suger was one of those monumental men whose lives and personalities would seem almost incredible had they not lived in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. Well known today as a pivotal figure in the development of Gothic architecture, he was in fact of such diverse and admirable abilities as to merit a term like “Renaissance man”—which of course raises the question of why this term ..read more

January 15th is the feast day of St Maurus, a disciple of St Benedict who is famous for his role in one of his master’s more impressive miracles. This is recounted by St Gregory the Great in chapter 7 of the Second Book of his Dialogues, which is devoted to the life of St Benedict. “On a certain day, as the venerable Benedict was in his cell, the young Placidus, one of the Saint’s monks, went ..read more

The Bridgettine nuns once prayed, every Sunday, a specialized Office in honor of the Holy Ghost. Its arrangement is more complete than that of most Little Offices, but less complete than that of the most famous and widely used, the Little Office of the Virgin Mary. All the Hours are present, with most their constitutive parts (antiphon, psalm, chapter, hymn, versicle, oration, etc.), but ..read more

Call for Participation - A Special Issue of Sacred Music Journal, Dedicated to Dr. William MahrtThe editorial team of the Church Music Association of America’s journal Sacred Music will dedicate the upcoming first issue of 2025 to the life and work of its recently deceased editor, Dr. William Mahrt. Submissions from readers are welcome, and may be of a varied nature:Short stories about Dr ..read more