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Holy Week & Triduum photos from Blackfriars

Below are some photos from this year's Holy Week and Triduum at Blackfriars, Oxford:



On Holy Monday, the community hosted an ecumenical Stations of the Cross. It was a chance for us to introduce the 14 Stations to other Christian communities in central Oxford and three Dominican students and members of other Christian communities gave brief reflections at each station.

This act of witness to our faith in Christ's saving death was expressed more publicly on Spy Wednesday as we walked through the busiest streets of Oxford, carrying a cross and giving out leaflets to shoppers and passers-by on the true meaning of Easter:



During the Triduum, the Office of Tenebrae was celebrated. A hearse of 15 unbleached candles is prepared and similarly unbleached candles are placed on the High Altar. In the Dominican custom, these are all gradually extinguished as the Office progresses.



The Office ends with a short litany at the foot of the Altar sung by four cantors alternating with the friars' choir and it ends, not with the loud banging some may remember in the Roman rite but with the words mortem autem crucis sung loudly and at a high pitch, after which the cantors prostrate themselves dramatically as the friars in choir kneel in prayer.





Above, the Altar of Repose on Maundy Thursday.

The Good Friday liturgy is very well-attended and many come, I suspect, for the distinctive Dominican way of performing the Veneration of the Cross. As has been posted here previously, the friars creep to the Cross by prostrating themselves three times. A relic of the True Cross is embedded in the cross which is held for veneration by the friars and the faithful, who come up, genuflecting thrice as they approach.





Finally the bleakness and austerity of Good Friday gives way to the light and richness of Easter Sunday. Below are photos from Solemn Vespers on Easter Sunday:

The Easter Vigil

The Readings may be found here.

We have come to Saturday evening at last. Those who have joined in the Triduum liturgies will, perhaps, be slightly worn out. The evening Mass of the Lord's Supper and the Solemn Liturgy of Our Lord's Passion, certainly as celebrated here at Blackfriars in Oxford, mean spending an impressive amount of time in Church - close to four hours in our case. We have celebrated our Lord's Passion and death by recalling and entering into the mysteries. Even though we all know the story, when we hear and see the Scriptures acted out for us, we cannot help but be left marked by the injustice and brutality of Jesus' death: all seems to be lost.

It is against this background that the joy of the resurrection breaks through at the Easter Vigil. We get a second wind despite our tiredness, because we know that death is not the end of the story, but the beginning. The austerity of Good Friday gives way to the light and life that the resurrection brings. What looked like defeat becomes the victory. In the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, we are given a survey of salvation history, where we see the unfolding of God's plan since the beginning of the world, a plan which reaches its high point in the death and resurrection of Christ.

What is enacted for us in the Triduum in such a careful and deliberate way should not only transform these few days and weeks, but our whole lives. We are shown what great love God has for us, and we are given a pattern for our lives. The death and resurrection of Christ effects an outpouring of grace that helps us to die to our pride, selfishness, anger, and greed, and rise to live lives that are joyful, peaceful, and useful in the service of God and neighbour. The message of the angel is that Christ is risen. Let us live each day as children of the risen Christ, rejoicing in the freedom won for us at so great a price.

Happy Easter!

Feast of the Chair of St. Peter

In the Gospel for today’s feast, Jesus puts a stark question to his disciples. It is the same question that Jesus puts to all those who would follow him and take the name of Christian. Who do you say that I am? Only Peter, moved by the inner prompting of the Holy Spirit, has the courage to speak up for the truth and proclaim boldly, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God". Then Jesus goes on to proclaim Peter as the Rock on which he will build his Church and to grant him the power of the keys, the power to bind and loose sin. That authority is founded on Peter’s proclamation of the truth about Jesus.

The mission of St Peter to proclaim the truth about Christ to the world remains with the Church. It is purpose of the teaching office of the Pope which we celebrate on today‘s feast. The truth about Christ, about the dignity and inviolability of every human life from conception to natural death, about love, justice and our true identities as beloved children of God is a message the world today often reacts against. Yet it is a message as vital and as liberating as ever. In a modern world that prefers to ask like Pilate "what is truth?" the Church dares to boldly proclaim Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Easter Liturgies

Here are some photographs of our Easter liturgies.

The Paschal candle, painted by Br Thomas Skeats OP, the sacristan.

The Easter fire is prepared in the garden by Fr Denis Minns OP and it is blessed:
"Father, we share in the light of your glory through your Son, the light of the world..."
The blessed fire is then used to light the Paschal candle.

The priory church is filled with the new light of Easter lit from the Paschal candle. In the words of the Exsultet, it is "a flame divided but undimmed, a pillar of fire that glows to the honour of God".

Br Robert Mehlhart OP led the schola of friars in singing some of the psalms during the Vigil and also conducted the volunteer choir. At the Vigil, the 'Blackfriars Mass' by Br Bruno Clifton OP was sung for the first time, as well as Palestrina's Sicut cervus and pieces of traditional chant.

The Paschal candle burns from Easter until Pentecost, a symbol of the risen Christ.

Solemn Vespers was sung on Easter Sunday and during the Magnificat, the High Altar and the people are incensed.

Sunlight floods the east window during Vespers. This natural light too reminds us of Christ. As the Exsultet says: "He is that morning star that knows no setting, Jesus Christ your Son who came back from the dead to shed his clear light on all humankind".

We wish all our Godzdogz readers a happy and blessed Easter!

Exsultet - Rejoice!

Many of our readers will be familiar with the Exsultet, the great hymn of praise to the paschal candle, as it appears in the Roman Missal. In Blackfriars Oxford we sing it to a tune adapted from Dominican chant and using a unique translation of the Latin text. Br Bruno Clifton OP sings it here in this setting, with photographs by Br Lawrence Lew OP

The prayer of the prophet Jeremiah

The video above is a recording of Oratio Jeremiae prophetae, part of the Office of Tenebrae for Holy Saturday. It is sung at Blackfriars this year by Robert Gay OP. Here is a translation of the text:

The prayer of the prophet Jeremiah

Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us; behold, and see our disgrace!
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to aliens.
We have become orphans, fatherless; our mothers are like widows.
We must pay for the water we drink, the wood we get must be bought.
With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest.
We have given the hand to Egypt, and to Assyria, to get bread enough.
Our fathers sinned, and are no more; and we bear their iniquities.
Slaves rule over us; there is none to deliver us from their hand.
We get our bread at the peril of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.
Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine.
Women are ravished in Zion, virgins in the towns of Judah.
Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders.
Young men are compelled to grind at the mill; and boys stagger under loads of wood.
The old men have quit the city gate, the young men their music.
The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!
For this our heart has become sick, for these things our eyes have grown dim,
for Mount Zion which lies desolate; jackals prowl over it.
But thou, O Lord, dost reign for ever; thy throne endures to all generations.
Why dost thou forget us for ever, why dost thou so long forsake us?
Restore us to thyself, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old!
Or hast thou utterly rejected us? Art thou exceedingly angry with us?

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn again to the Lord your God.

Good Friday Liturgy

Some moments from our liturgy at Blackfriars Oxford, captured on camera:

A distinctive feature of Tenebrae is the triangular hearse with fifteen unbleached candles. As the psalms are sung, the candles are progressively extinguished. This represents the abandonment of Christ by his disciples.

At the end of Tenebrae, the cantors stand in the middle of the choir and at the steps of the High Altar and implore God's mercy and the brethren and congregation respond with the words of Philippians: "Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."

At the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion, the Cross is lifted high and venerated.

Friars and people creep to the Cross - an ancient liturgical practice. Three times along the way the brethren prostrate themselves and the people kneel as they approach Christ's throne of mercy - his holy Cross.

A moment of stillness after the liturgy...

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ

In Blackfriars on Good Friday St John's account of the passion is sung to a setting based on Dominican chant. It is usually sung by three people and a small choir. However, this recording was made during a rehearsal by Fr Richard Ounsworth OP and Br Bruno Clifton OP and so only two voices are employed.

We wish to share part of our liturgy with you and offer this video as a way of using music and art to pray and meditate on the Lord's Passion.

Holy Week and Triduum at Blackfriars

The Priory of the Holy Spirit

Oxford

HOLY WEEK AND TRIDUUM
All are very welcome to join us for the following liturgical celebrations

Monday - Wednesday:

7.45am ....... Matins & Lauds
12.00 .......... Stations of the Cross (led by the Dominican students)
1.05pm ....... Midday Office
6.15 ............ Conventual Mass
6.45 ............ Vespers


Maundy Thursday:

9.30am ...... Tenebrae
1.05pm ...... Midday Office
8.00 ........... Mass of the Lord's Supper
followed by watching at the Altar of Repose until midnight


Good Friday:

9.30am ....... Tenebrae
1.05pm ....... Midday Office
3.00 ............ Solemn Liturgy of the Lord's Passion


Holy Saturday:

9.30am ....... Tenebrae
1.05pm ....... Midday Office
6.00 ........... Vespers
11.00 .......... Easter Vigil

Confessions are available from 12 noon - 1pm and from 5-6pm


Easter Sunday:

8.ooam ........ Mass
9.30 ............. Family Mass
1.05pm ........ Midday Office
6.00 ............ Solemn Vespers

There will be no evening Mass on Easter Sunday

Film Review: Die Grosse Stille (Into Great Silence)

Philip Groening waited thirteen years before the Carthusian monks at La Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble felt ready for their life to be filmed. The result is this 164-minute film that takes us, as its English title puts it, Into Great Silence. It is the first ever cinematic record of life at the Carthusian mother house. To achieve this poetic and beautiful evocation of the life of St Bruno's austere monastic order, Groening lived in the monastery and follow the monastic routine. He spent just three hours a day filming material for this documentary, accumulating in total 120 hours of film.

The film was selected for the Edinburgh Festival last year and has been lauded across Europe but it can only be seen at select cinemas in the United Kingdom. Although I did not wait as long as Groening to enter the great silence I had been anticipating its UK release for some time. It is well worth the effort of finding a cinema where it is being screened.

Die Grosse Stille allows one to experience Carthusian life through the cinematic art. The viewer is immersed in the silence, rhythm, seasons and chant of monastic life in this beautiful alpine monastery and enveloped in the serenity of the contemplative life in which God's presence is sought. In the silence of the monastic life - punctuated by the steady cadence of bells - even the ordinary jobs of chopping wood, mending a shoe or cutting woolen cloth for a new habit are embued with profound care as these menial tasks and routine chores are offered to God with love. In the midst of such silence, the conversations that take place during the weekly recreation are savoured and become precious, for the lips of the monks are otherwise opened only in praise of God through the chants and prayers of the liturgy. The monastic liturgy is sensitively filmed and we are allowed to glimpse also the hidden life of the monks in their cells, at work, in the cloister and even playing in the snow.

It was a special thrill to hear the monks sing the ancient Carthusian chant and discern certain tones that it shares with Dominican chant. Other aspects, such as the white habit (which included a black hooded cloak for the novices), the adoption of various bodily postures in prayer, and a scene of the monks eating together (as they do on Sundays and great feasts) in their austere refectory, reminded me of the influence of Carthusian life on St Dominic and the first Dominicans. It seemed to me that I was viewing the life of our spiritual ancestors.

I was also touched at seeing a novice, Dom Benjamin, being received into the community, taken to his cell by the other monks who prayed with him in his cell for that first time. We see him later learning to chop wood, sing plainsong and chant the readings during the night office. In many ways I felt a sense of connection with him, as I too am still so new to the adventure of religious life.


Scriptural texts repeatedly puntuated the film, in particular Jeremiah 20:7, You have seduced me, O Lord, and I have let myself be seduced, words that seem to explain why La Grande Chartreuse exists.

Religious life is a mystery and a gift, a divine call that no film can ever adequately reveal, but Die Grosse Stille does help us to see how God's grace - like the gently-falling snow that surrounded the monastery - is powerfully and silently at work in the lives of those who fall in love with the God of love. This is a cause for wonder and thanks, and as one views Groening's documentary, one cannot help but enter the silence and begin to contemplate this grace at work in one's own life, calling us to surrender all for love of Him.


To discover more about the Carthusian vocation, click on the links above, or visit the Parkminster website

Compline at Blackfriars

The office of Compline is sung at Blackfriars, Oxford each Wednesday in the eight teaching weeks of term. It is one of the most beautiful of the Church's liturgies with its quiet meditations on trustfulness and sleep, on death and God's watchful care. You are welcome to join us. It begins at 10.00 p.m. The church will be open from 9.45 p.m.

Commemoration of our Deceased Parents

On 7 February each year Dominicans pray for their deceased parents. The conventual Mass is offered for them and the Office of the Dead is sung. Brother Alistair Jones OP reflects on the significance of this annual liturgical commemoration:

Death leaves all kinds of unfinished business. When we die most of us will not have become all we should have been - there will have been words of tenderness and forgiveness never spoken, damaging relationships never mended, kinds of trust never learnt. We will have not changed in ways in which we might have changed. So we will die still in need of spiritual healing. The time between death and the vision of God – the time that we call purgatory - essentially is a time for this kind of healing.

It is difficult to hold onto any picture of the beyond. Experience of the death of a loved one brings home all the strangeness of death. An actual death makes it perfectly clear how little we know. But it is possible to make a guess what this time – if it is a time - will be like. The poet Dante wrote a long poem about purgatory - the poem is, in effect, a long guess. Dante thought that this period of being between worlds would be both painful and acutely joyful. He thought the pain and the joy would be God’s way of touching parts of ourselves that we have hardened and brutalised. The pain would be bitter-sweet, it would be suffered in the knowledge that it was a way of undoing all the self-inflicted effects of sin, in the knowledge that it was God’s way of loosening our sclerotic hearts. Above all, purgatory would be a place of renewal. It would be a place of renewed sociability, of remaking the bonds between people, which had been broken by sin. It would also be a place of renewed and purified community with God.

There is a lot of sense and wisdom in Dante’s vision of the healing flames. If purgatory is a place of healing, it must be a healing that can penetrate human nature through and through, and perhaps all real healing like all real change involves something bitter-sweet.

Today we are praying especially that that healing will come home to our dead parents, whose lives are now a mystery to us, but who claim our time and attention. Perhaps we are likely to know our parents’ need for healing best of all. It is easy to know the weaknesses and failures of those we have lived with. But knowledge of someone’s weakness – especially when it is mixed with gratitude to that person – should be a cause of love and nothing else. Our prayer for our dead parents is the best expression which we can give of that love.

Sequence for Candlemas

In the 9th and 10th centuries, there arose a new form of hymnody, the Prose or Sequence which was sung after the Gradual (the anthem between the Epistle and Gospel at Mass). In the Dominican Missal, the Sequence Laetabundus, may still be sung at the Third Mass of Christmas, the Epiphany and Candlemas. It begins thus:

"Let the faithful choir
Joyfully rejoice,
Alleuia!

The womb of the undefiled one
Has brought forth the King of kings:
A thing of wonder..."

There were quite a number of sequences written to celebrate the Incarnation of Christ, but the most famous Nativity sequence is this one. It was once sung all over Europe - the oldest surviving manuscript evidence is from the 11th century - being especially popular in England and France. Unlike other early sequences, it was written in rhymed stanzas and this came to influence later hymns and verses.

This Sequence is believed to survive today only in the Dominican liturgical books and the recording above is from Blackfriars, Oxford. The Latin words and music may be found here and a full translation here.

The Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity

The week of the 18th to the 25th of January is the octave of prayer for Christian unity. A group of Dominican students attended a celebration of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom at the Orthodox Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford. Each year the parish celebrates a special liturgy to mark the octave, to which members of other Churches and denominations are invited. In his homily the celebrant, Bishop Kallistos Ware, spoke of the pain caused by divisions amongst Christians. He stressed the need for courage and patience in the search for true unity.

In the encyclical Ut unum sint, the late Pope John Paul II, reminds us that ‘the unity of all divided humanity is the will of God… On the eve of his sacrifice on the Cross, Jesus himself prayed to the Father for his disciples and for all those who believe in him, that they might be one, a living communion. This is the basis not only of the duty, but also of the responsibility before God and his plan, which falls to those who through Baptism become members of the Body of Christ, a Body in which the fullness of reconciliation and communion must be made present’ (UUS, 6).

The encyclical reminds us of the importance of prayer in the work of bringing about the unity to which we are called: ‘When brothers and sisters who are not in perfect communion with one another come together to pray, the Second Vatican Council defines their prayer as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement. This prayer is a very effective means of petitioning for the grace of unity, a genuine expression of the ties which even now bind Catholics to their separated brethren. When Christians pray together, the goal of unity seems closer… If Christians, despite their divisions, can grow ever more united in common prayer around Christ, they will grow in the awareness of how little divides them in comparison to what unites them' (UUS, 21-22).

Here is a prayer for Christian unity written by the Orthodox priest and theologian, Fr. Sergei Bulgakov (1871 – 1944):

O Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, thou didst promise to abide with us always. Thou dost call all Christians to draw near and partake of Thy Body and Blood. But our sin has divided us and we have no power to partake of Thy Holy Eucharist together. We confess this our sin and we pray Thee, forgive us and help us to serve the ways of reconciliation, according to Thy Will. Kindle our hearts with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Give us the spirit of Wisdom and faith, of daring and of patience, of humility and firmness, of love and of repentance, through the prayers of the most blessed Mother of God and of all the saints. Amen.

Blessed be his Holy Name

In 1274 the Council of Lyons entrusted to the Order of Preachers the task of promoting reverence for the Holy Name of Jesus and countering profane and blasphemous uses of it. In 2002 Pope John Paul II re-instituted the feast of the Holy Name, celebrated now on January 3.

One of the earliest Christian creeds is simply 'Jesus is Lord'. Saint Paul tells us that it is on account of his obedience and love that Jesus is given the divine name 'Lord', the name that is above every name, the name before which all creation bows (Philippians 2:9-10). The honour evoked by this divine name extends also to His human name, Jesus. which is entitled to similar honour and respect.

An alarming anecdote tells of a child asking her parents why Mary and Joseph named their child after a swear word! It remains the case that many people use the name 'Jesus' in swearing so that the child's experience is not unusual. The commemoration of this feast is one way to counteract such abuse and to give due honour to the Holy Name.

[The following hymn may be sung to any long meter tune]

HYMN IN PRAISE OF THE HOLY NAME
by Br Lawrence Lew, O.P.

Sing we of that most precious name,
The name by which all men are saved,
That angel hosts adore and fame,
That shatters evil and the grave.

The name before whom devils quake,
The name proclaimed before all time,
The name that took flesh for our sake
The name told oft in verse and rhyme.

This name foretold by angel sent,
And promised to the one Most Pure;
The name to whom she gave assent
Became mankind’s salvation sure.

The name that came in quiet of night,
In lowly pomp led out to die.
The name that humbly veiled its might
Is now raised up to God on high.

This name the prophets spoke of old
And chosen men did tell abroad,
To bring to faith by preaching bold
And in this name confess the Lord.

This name is love, let evils cease,
It conquers sin and death and fear,
Brings end to sorrow, hastens peace
And is a cry for justice clear.

Behold! To every Christian soul,
This name brings joy and hope divine;
Across the Church, from pole to pole,
Gives comfort to the one who pines.

Sing we of this most glorious name
Invoked in prayer, called on by men;
For saints and sinners, still the same:
Jesus, O Jesus Christ, Amen!