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Although many do not specifically celebrate “Passion Sunday” on this 5th Sunday of Lent, a brief note on the common Communio Hoc Corpus may be worthy.
 

The tritone from Fa to Ti on vobis tradetur provides insight as our Lord begins his suffering and passion.  It is a difficult journey, one which takes great pains.  We see this same intervallic relationship on calix novi, meo sanguine, and meam commemorationem.  As we begin the last week of Lent and begin Holy Week, may our Sacred music reflect the giving of Christ in the Holy Eucharist and on the Cross as truly a gift for our salvation.

I always like finding things that if they are not precisely “new,” they are new to me.  There was an interview today on La Lettre de Paix Liturgique with the new president of the International Federation of Una Voce.  The new president, Felipe Alanis Suarez called attention to these interesting position papers on the Extraordinary Form.  They are interesting in both their texts and their footnotes – attention footnote groupies!

You can also enjoy scrolling down the sidebar and seeing past presidents and “movers and shakers” of the movement, including Dr. Borghild Krane, a Norwegian psychologist and, gasp! a woman.

From the website of the FIUV

Here’s the link – certainly worth a glance. And if you don’t have time for the Internet rabbit hole right now, bookmark it for future enjoyment!

Not a great Sunday school class.
By five minutes until dismissal, I was thinking maybe one of the worst ever.
We would be discussing the difference between obligatory and optional, sacraments and sacramentals, public (official) and private, Liturgy and devotions.
So, it being Lent, I thought we could do a modified, very truncated Stations, the Catholic devotion equivalent of speed dating.
The class would consist of a little discussion of how everyones week had been, a little coloring, a little reading of scripture, a little practicing of liturgical postures, a little early Church history, a little map reading, a little music, a little explanation of the Via Crucis.
We only sang 4 verses of the Stabat Mater, one after each of the 1st, 5th, 11th and final Stations.

Well, it was horrible.
Ghastly, I thought.
I’m going to have to spend a half hour this weekend scraping crushed crayons off the floor. The boy given the 12th station to color made the entire page a solid and undecipherable spot of blue. One reader thought “Simon the Siren” was the best joke anyone had every come up with. Another made the entire devotion into a math problem, shouting out things like, “Nine? com’on, we got six more to go, folks!!!!” The crucifer used the crucifix to scratch her shoulders when she got bored. The challenge of genuflection inspired remarkable gymnastic feats. Some were just too tired to walk the five or six feet to the next Station each time, and scooted across the linoleum on their bottoms.

But when we finished, one said, surprised, Hey, that was kinda cool.
Another, but sad.
Several, nodding, yeah, sad. Really sad.
The first, but cool. And the song.
Some others, yeah, the song.
One, hopefully, are we gonna sing it again?

And as they left, one was humming the ancient chant.

The news of the day is the exemplary funeral Mass for Justice Antonin Scalia, held this morning at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (beginning at the 53 minute mark below).

From the stunning music to the ceremonial to the ars celebrandi to the outstanding presidential chanting to the beautiful homily, the Mass set an example of how a Roman Catholic funeral in the novus ordo can be a true “sacrifice of praise,” in the words of St. Paul echoed in the closing hymn.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, worship is a matter of justice, of giving God what is owed to Him. At a funeral, the worship we offer to God is also owed, in charity, to the deceased. The prayers of the living have a real effect in the economy of the communion of saints, and one of the main jobs of those responsible is to continually lead the people to pray for the deceased with ever more piety and an ever more resolute intention.

A Mass this well celebrated is not an accident, not a “one-off.” The virtue of liturgical leadership, like all the moral virtues, arises from repeated action. Fr. Paul Scalia’s Masses are consistently reverent, and pastoral in the highest sense, intended to lead the people in prayer to God. His homilies are consistently well-crafted and theologically strong. The ceremonies at the National Shrine are consistently beautiful and unhurried, the music consistently exquisite.
 
These are the things that matter, in the daily and Sunday Masses, at weddings and funerals held in every parish church, modest as well as grand. Let the focus be on God and on the salvation He gives, at such a cost, and let the liturgical arts be used in the best possible way: for prayer.