March 2024 Print

By Matthew Hazell

Compared to the traditional Roman Missal, which has proper Masses for each day in the Octave of Easter and each Sunday after Easter, as well as for the Ascension, its Vigil and the following Sunday, the Novus Ordo has a much larger number of prayers in its Eastertide. In the course of the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms, all Sundays and ferial days in this season were assigned proper Masses, with collects unique to each day and a larger number of super oblata and postcommunion prayers used.

One might have assumed that the Eastertide orations of the traditional Roman Rite would have just been carried over into the Novus Ordo, supplemented with other orations from the Latin liturgical tradition. However, this was not the case. Various prayers have been edited in ways not attested in their manuscript history, others long-used in particular times of the liturgical year have been moved to where they have never been used before, and still others have been combined with one or more other prayers to create new and original texts.

These differences between the prayers of the traditional Roman Missal and the Novus Ordo are gradually becoming more well-known among the faithful.¹ Indeed, I have examined elsewhere the issues in the reform of the Eastertide Collects of the Novus Ordo.² Here, we will examine what happened to the Eastertide Secrets and Postcommunions of the traditional Roman Rite in the course of the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms, as once one begins to look in a little more detail at the changes, numerous problems begin to appear.

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In the 1962 Missal, there are eleven unique Secret prayers used for Eastertide.³ Almost all of these are utilized as orationes super oblata (“Prayers over the Offerings”) in the Novus Ordo, but only three of them are kept on the same day. The Secret for the Easter Vigil is kept unchanged in the Novus Ordo, but with its repetition on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday eliminated.⁴ The Secret for Easter Saturday is also kept unchanged, but unlike in the 1962 Missal it is now repeated in the post-Vatican II Missal on five occasions in Eastertide, including on the 4th Sunday of Easter.⁵ The traditional Secret for the 4th Sunday after Easter is also kept (with a very minor change), but in the Novus Ordo this Sunday is now known as the 5th Sunday of Easter, and the prayer is repeated five times on various weekdays of Easter.

Numerous others Secrets have been moved to elsewhere in Eastertide. That of Easter Tuesday, also used on the 5th Sunday after Easter, has been moved in the reformed Missal to the 7th Sunday of Easter (the equivalent of the Sunday after Ascension), with no changes to its text.

The Secret for Easter Wednesday has been moved to become the super oblata for Easter Sunday, with some changes to the text. In line with the Gelasianum Vetus, one of the oldest witnesses to the Roman liturgy we have (dating from the early 8th century), the phrase “is both fed and nourished” (et pascitur et nutritur) has become “is reborn and nourished” (renascitur et nutritur), but the sacrificial language of the prayer has been toned down: immolamus is now offerimus, a change not attested in any of the more than fifty extant manuscripts this prayer appears in. One change thus restores the prayer to its more ancient form, but the other change is a complete novelty unknown in the history of this prayer. It should also perhaps be noted that this oration is strongly associated with the Easter Octave, but until the post-Vatican II Missal had never been used on Easter Sunday itself.

The Secret for Easter Thursday has been moved in the Novus Ordo to Easter Monday and is also duplicated, with some minor changes, on the 2nd Sunday of Easter.

The traditional Secret for Easter Friday has been moved to Easter Thursday in the post-Vatican II Missal, but has been shorn of its “negative language.” The phrase “we offer for the expiation of the sins of those who have been reborn” (quas et pro renatorum expiatione peccati deferimus) has been changed to “we offer joyfully for those who have been reborn” (quas et pro renatis gratanter deferimus). It is true that in seven of the fifty-one extant manuscripts this Secret appears in, the word peccati is omitted, but the majority of manuscripts, including the earliest (such as the Gelasianum Vetus), retain it, and it is undoubtedly part of the prayer’s original text. The claim of Paul VI that, in the Novus Ordo, “the most ancient prayers have been revised to accord with the ancient texts”⁶ does not stand up well to scrutiny here.

The Secret for Low Sunday has been moved to become the super oblata for the 3rd Sunday of Easter, with no changes to its text. In not one of the fifty-one extant manuscripts this prayer appears in does it occur on the 3rd Sunday of Easter/2nd Sunday after Easter, and in all but two of them it is used on the day it occurs in the traditional Roman Missal, on Low Sunday.

The Secret for the Sunday after Ascension has been shifted to the following day in the Novus Ordo, Monday in Week 7 of Easter, with no changes to its text.

One Secret, that for the 2nd Sunday after Easter, has been moved outside the Easter season, and in the Novus Ordo acts as the super oblata for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, with no changes made to its text. In forty-five manuscripts, including the Gelasianum Vetus, this Secret is used on the 2nd Sunday after Easter, and in six others it is used on other occasions, but always during Eastertide. The post-Vatican II Missal marks the first occasion where this prayer is used outside of Easter.

Finally, the Secret for the 3rd Sunday after Easter in the traditional Roman Rite is not used anywhere in the Novus Ordo. This is in spite of the fact that it is very well-attested on this Sunday, occurring in forty-three extant manuscripts including the Gelasianum Vetus. One suspects that this prayer was a victim of the supposedly more positive “modern mentality” the reformers boasted about,⁷ since it puts heaven and earth into “negative” opposition: “Grant, O Lord, by these mysteries, that taming our earthly desires, we may learn to love the things of heaven.”⁸ In reality, this is part of an unprecedented censorship of the Church’s liturgical heritage, under the guise of the pastoral needs of “modern man.”

This can further be seen in two of the new prayers created for the Novus Ordo using the method of centonisation.⁹ For the 6th Sunday of Easter, the new super oblata is a combination of parts from three Secret prayers, one from the 1962 Missal, and two from the Verona Sacramentary, the most ancient witness to the Roman Rite we have. The “negative” aspects in one of the prayers taken from this sacramentary (“even though we do not merit it by our works,” quod etiamsi nostris operibus non meremur) are conveniently avoided in the centonisation.

The other example is the new super oblata for Wednesday in Week 7 of Easter, which stitches together parts of three prayers, two Secrets and a Postcommunion, all from the Verona Sacramentary. In one of the Secrets, we ask that the Lord may receive the gifts “by which our errors may be appeased” (sis placatus erroribus): this was passed over by the reformers, presumably because it was also too “negative.”

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The situation does not improve all that much when we turn to the Postcommunions. Of the twelve unique prayers in the 1962 Missal, again only three were kept on the same day. As with the Secret, the Postcommunion for the Easter Vigil was kept in place unchanged in the Novus Ordo, with its repetitions on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday eliminated. That of Easter Wednesday was also kept in place, but with minor changes made to address the prayer to the Father rather than to the Son, even though this prayer is always addressed to the Son in the forty-six manuscripts it appears in.¹⁰ The Postcommunion for Easter Thursday was kept in place, with no changes to its text.

Three of the traditional Postcommunions have been moved elsewhere in the Missal. The Postcommunion for Easter Tuesday was moved to the 2nd Sunday of Easter—a day it has never been used on—with no textual changes. The Postcommunion for Easter Saturday is now used on the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Novus Ordo. This prayer appears in fifty-two extant manuscripts: in only one is it not used on Easter Saturday, and in that one it is used in July, not in Time after Epiphany. The Postcommunion for Low Sunday, repeated on Ember Saturday in Advent,¹¹ has been moved to Thursday in Week 1 of Lent. It is very likely that, because of the Eucharistic “remedy” (remedium) mentioned in this prayer, the reformers thought it was more appropriate for Lent—but there is no record of this Postcommunion ever having been used in Lent before the 1970 Missal.

Five of the remaining six Postcommunion prayers¹² were deleted by the reformers, and do not occur anywhere in the Novus Ordo. It seems very likely that ideological censorship is the reason behind at least one of these deletions. The Postcommunion for the 4th Sunday after Easter asks the Lord to “cleanse us from vice and rescue us from all danger” (et purgemur a vitiis et a periculis omnibus eruamur), just the sort of “difficult” language that was often avoided, deleted or replaced in the course of the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.

Healing is a theme for two of the prayers deleted from the reformed Missal. The traditional Postcommunion for the 2nd Sunday after Easter has the phrase “having obtained the grace of your vivification” (ut vivificationis tuae gratiam consequentes), a reference to our restoration to new life in Christ. This is a very suitable prayer for Eastertide, but not, apparently, for “modern man.” On the following Sunday, the 3rd after Easter, we ask that the Eucharist may “protect us with bodily help” (et corporalibus tueantur auxiliis). This Postcommunion is repeated on Wednesday in Week 4 of Lent. Given the policy of the liturgical reformers to eliminate repetitions of orations, and also given this prayer’s language of “protection,” one might have expected its Lenten use to have been retained. It is extremely puzzling why the reformers chose not to preserve this prayer at all.

The remaining two deletions are similarly baffling. The Postcommunion for the 5th Sunday after Easter (repeated on the Vigil of the Ascension) has a beautiful parallelism in its second half: “Grant to us, O Lord, who have been nourished and strengthened by your heavenly table, that we may both desire what is right, and gain what we desire” (et desiderare quæ recta sunt, et desiderata percipere). This prayer, attested in both the Verona Sacramentary and the Gelasianum Vetus, is nowhere to be found in the Novus Ordo. Likewise, the Postcommunion for the Sunday after Ascension, also attested in these two ancient sacramentaries, has completely disappeared in the post-Vatican II Missal, for seemingly no reason other than that the reformers thought they had found something better.¹³

As with the Secret prayers, we can also see censorship in the Postcommunions that were added to the Novus Ordo. The Postcommunion for the 4th Sunday of Easter is a Lenten oratio super populum (“Prayer over the People”) from the Gelasianum Vetus, and not only has it had its genre and season changed, but its text has been drastically altered: “Look upon your flock, kind Shepherd, and do not allow the sheep you have redeemed with the Precious Blood of your Son to be torn apart by the devil’s attack” has been changed to the more optimistic “Look upon your flock, kind Shepherd, and be pleased to settle in eternal pastures the sheep you have redeemed by the Precious Blood of your Son.” This change is not attested in any manuscript, and is completely novel to the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.

The Postcommunion for Easter Monday in the Novus Ordo is a combination of two Eastertide Postcommunions from the Gelasianum Vetus, one of which contains the phrase “do not allow the snares of error to entangle them” (nullis permittas errorum laqueis implicare). That this phrase was avoided in the reformers’ centonisation will perhaps be unsurprising at this point.

The Postcommunion for the 5th Sunday of Easter takes the traditional Postcommunion for Monday in the Octave of Pentecost and uses part of a preface from the Verona Sacramentary to replace its “negative” ending: “Be present to your people, we pray, O Lord, and defend those you have imbued with heavenly mysteries against the fury of the enemy” (ab hostium furore defende) becomes “Graciously be present to your people, we pray, O Lord, and lead those you have imbued with heavenly mysteries to pass from former ways to newness of life” (fac ad novitatem vitae de vetustate transire).

Perhaps the best example of this liturgical censorship in the Novus Ordo, at least in Eastertide, is to be found in the Postcommunion for Easter Saturday. This prayer combines the traditional Postcommunion for Easter Friday (with slight changes) with part of a sermon of Saint Leo the Great, deftly avoiding any “negative” material in either source:

Behold your people, we pray, O Lord, and as you were pleased to renew them by eternal mysteries, graciously free them from temporal faults. (1962 MR: Easter Friday, Postcommunion)

If any fault should creep in, however, it must be blotted out with speedy penitence. Since the healing of old sicknesses comes slowly and with difficulty, so much faster should the remedy be applied while the wounds are still fresh. That way, always rising from relapses to wholeness, we might deserve to arrive at that incorruptible resurrection of glorified flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen. (Saint Leo the Great, Sermon 71, 6)¹⁴

Look with kindness upon your people, we pray, O Lord, and grant that those you were pleased to renew by eternal mysteries may attain in their flesh the incorruptible glory of the resurrection. (1970/2008 MR: Easter Saturday, Postcommunion)

The more one examines the post-Vatican II reforms, the more concerning things become. We have seen that the traditional Eastertide Secret and Postcommunion prayers have often been edited in ways entirely unknown in their history, moved from their well-established days and seasons, chopped up and blended with parts of other liturgical and patristic texts to make completely new compositions, and in some cases censored or deleted entirely for the benefit of “modern man.” This is clearly an impoverishment of the Roman Rite, for which the only remedy seems to be a return to the fullness of the Church’s liturgical tradition.

Endnotes

¹ Thanks in large part to the work of (e.g.) Lauren Pristas, The Collects of the Roman Missal: A Comparative Study of the Sundays in Proper Seasons before and after the Second Vatican Council (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), as well as Peter Kwasniewski in numerous articles at the New Liturgical Movement, Rorate Caeli, and One Peter Five websites.

² See Matthew P. Hazell, “The Eastertide Collects in the Post-Vatican II Missal: A Problematic Reform,” Rorate Caeli, May 17, 2021, https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-eastertide-collects-in-post-vatican.html (accessed January 25, 2024).

³ I have excluded the Ascension of the Lord and its Vigil, the Litanies, and Pentecost and its Vigil. These would all benefit from separate examinations.

⁴ The elimination of repetitions was a policy of Coetus XVIII bis, the group responsible for the reform of the orations and prefaces in the Missal: see Consilium ad exsequendam, Schema 186 (De Missali, 27), September 19, 1966, pp. 1-2: “for every text that frequently occurs in the Missal, its ancient use is to be retained, with very few exceptions. For Masses which lack orations after this, new texts are to be selected… Does it please the Fathers that, in revising the Roman Missal, the text of orations not be repeated?”

⁵ Note that this is contrary to the policy cited above!

⁶ Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum, April 3, 1969.

⁷ See, e.g., Carlo Braga, “The Orations of the New Roman Missal,” Rivista liturgica 58.1 (1971), pp. 92-101. English translation in Lauren Pristas, “The Orations of the Vatican II Missal: Policies for Revision,” Communio 30 (Winter 2003), pp. 621-653, at pp. 629-639.

⁸ Other prayers, often with the similar phrase terrena despicere et amare caelestia, were either changed or deleted from the post-Vatican II Missal. For example, the postcommunion for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, the last clause of which reads doceas nos terrena despicere et amare caelestia (“teach us to disdain the things of earth and love the things of heaven”) in the traditional Missal, was changed to doceas nos terrena sapienter perpendere, et caelestibus inhaerere (“teach us to judge wisely the things of earth and hold firm to the things of heaven”) in the Novus Ordo. For more on this topic, see Daniel G. Van Slyke, “Despicere mundum et terrae: A Spiritual and Liturgical Motif in the Missale Romanum,” Usus Antiquior 1.1 (2010), pp. 59-81.

⁹ “Centonisation” is the technical term for the combination of parts of two or more existing prayers or other sources (e.g., biblical, patristic) to create a newly-composed prayer. It is a compositional technique that was used with some regularity by the post-Vatican II liturgical reformers.

¹⁰ It was a policy of the Consilium to change the relatively small number of orations in the Missal addressed to Christ so that they addressed the Father instead: see Schema 186, p. 5: “Does it please the Fathers… that all the orations of the Roman Missal be directed to the Father?” For more on why this rigid uniformity in address is undesirable, see Peter Kwasniewski, “Patricentric Purism and the Elimination of Liturgical Prayer Addressed to Christ,” New Liturgical Movement, April 12, 2021, https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/04/patricentric-purism-and-elimination-of.html (accessed January 25, 2024).

¹¹ It is also used, with relevant textual additions, on February 2, the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Candlemas).

¹² The traditional Postcommunion for Easter Friday was used in a centonisation we will examine below.

¹³ The Postcommunion in the Novus Ordo for the 7th Sunday after Easter is taken from the Verona Sacramentary (n. 174), with no change in its text, but with a change of genre: in this sacramentary it is a Secret, not a Postcommunion (it is also a Secret in the only other manuscript it appears in).

¹⁴ Translation from Jane Patricia Freeland and Agnes Josephine Conway (transl.), Leo the Great: Sermons (The Fathers of the Church, 93; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), p. 315.

TITLE IMAGE: Resurrection, Bartolomeo di Tommaso (1408–1454).