Catholic Ceremonies

In some old churches the columns do not line up, and Fr. Durand says this was no mason’s mistake. The builders were quoting a verse applied to Christ on the cross, “All My bones have been displaced,” and a nave that leans toward Our Lady’s chapel is the Son’s head bending toward His Mother. That is how this book reads a church and everything done in it.

Most of it follows the Mass from the prayers at the foot of the altar to the Last Gospel as the life of Christ told in sequence. The Introit is the Incarnation, the Gloria is the song at Bethlehem, the Offertory is the Last Supper, and the priest’s low voice through the Canon is Christ silent before His judges, raised only seven times, once for each word spoken from the cross. The vestments carry the Passion in the same way. The amice is the cloth tied over a condemned man’s head, and the stole is the rope that led Him to Calvary.

Sunday Vespers is explained psalm by psalm, with the five psalms placed in the five wounds, and the year is taken feast by feast with the stories behind the customs, from the three Masses of Christmas to the bells that fall silent on Holy Thursday. The Latin and English of the Ordinary of the Mass, Sunday Vespers, and Benediction are printed at the end, so the book serves as a missal companion in the pew, and the drawings of the articles used at church ceremonies, each with its proper name, are carried as plates. Durand wrote for Catholics who were, in his words, blind spectators at their own ceremonies, and the book still does that job.