Gaudete Sunday

Another of the Blessed Cardinal Schuster's historical briefs on the liturgical day. He goes into great detail on this, the third Sunday of Advent, and never explicitly calls it "Gaudete Sunday".

The Third Sunday of Advent
Station at St Peter's

Seeing that in Rome on the fourth Sunday of Advent there was no station – because of the great ordinations of priests and deacons mense decembri which took place on the preceding night – this third station preparatory to Christmas was celebrated at St Peter's, with unwonted splendour of rites and processions, as if it were the mind of the church to introduce us at this moment to the holy joys which belong to the season of our Lord's birth.

This, in fact, is the week of the great scrutinies and of the solemn fasts preceding the ordinations; hence the faithful also on this day assemble at the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, in order to obtain for themselves his heavenly protection, and to share with the Pastor Ecclesiæ the joy which fills the hearts of the flock at the glad news of the approaching parousia: Prope est jam Dominus. . . .

Formerly the Pope used to repair to the Vatican Basilica at sunset on the Saturday, and, being present at Vespers, intoned the first and last antiphons which were indicated to him by one of the canons. The Ordines Romani tell us that in reward for this service the Pontiff was accustomed to place a gold coin in the mouth of the worthy ecclesiastic.

It was the duty of the Vatican Chapter to provide the Pope and the cardinals with supper and sleeping accommodation for the first part of the night; this latter, however, was not required for long, since the Office of the Vigil began shortly after midnight. The Pope, preceded by acolytes with candles and torches, went first to incense the altars of St Leo I, St Gregory the Great, St Sebastian, St Tiburtius, the Apostles SS Simon and Jude, the Holy Face, the Blessed Virgin and lastly that of St Pastor. This being done, he went down into the crypt of the Confession of St Peter, and after he had offered incense at the tomb of the Apostle the first Offices of the Vigil began. Three psalms and three scriptural lessons were chanted by the clergy, then the primicerius intoned the Te Deum, the Pope recited the collect, and so ended the first part of the night psalmody ad corpus.

The procession then returned to the basilica above in the same order in which it had come down, and after the altar under which the body of St Peter rested had been incensed, began the Office of Matins, properly so called. This pro­ceeded without there being anything special to be noted. The Vatican canons chanted the lessons of the first nocturn; in the second, the first two lections — extracts from the letter of St Leo I to the Patriarch Flavian — fell to the bishops; the third lection and the first of the third nocturn to two of the cardinals; the last but one to the senior canon of the Vatican Chapter; and the last one of all to the Pope. The Office of Dawn followed, in which the Pontiff intoned the antiphon preceding the Canticle of Zachary, and last of all recited the final collect.

The stational Mass for this day, as it immediately precedes the Christmas season, had originally a strikingly festive character. We know that novenas and triduums in preparation for the greater feasts are of later origin, and in the golden age of the Liturgy these weeks before Easter and Christmas, with their vigiliary Masses and stational synaxes at the most famous basilicas of the Eternal City, were intended to prepare the souls of the faithful and to obtain for them from heaven the grace to profit by the various solemnities of the liturgical cycle.

At the Mass the Pope intoned the Angelic Hymn, which was then taken up by all the clergy. After the Collect, the singers, led by the cardinal deacons, the apostolic sub-deacons and the notaries, recited the Acclamations or Laudes, in honour of the Pontiff, the clergy and the Roman people, a custom still observed at the coronation ceremony of the Sovereign Pontiffs. At the termination of the holy sacrifice the deacons replaced the tiara on the head of the Pope, and, having mounted their horses, the whole cavalcade proceeded with all due solemnity to the Lateran, where the banquet took place.

To-day's ceremonial has preserved very little indeed of all this brilliant ritual setting; joy is, indeed, by no means the dominant note of modern society. At the Mass, it is true, the sacred ministers are clothed in rose-coloured vestments in place of the customary ones of violet, and the organ once again fills the aisles with its strains. The divine Office itself has not undergone any change; it preserves intact its primitive spirit of festivity and eagerness aroused by the nearness of the coming of the Saviour.

The Introit is derived from St Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (iv, 4), and is well adapted to the occasion. The Lord is now very close at hand, and at this announcement the heart overflows with joy. Yet this joy is in complete contrast to that to which the world gives itself up, for it is the fruit of that inward peace which the Holy Ghost communicates to the soul when it remains faithful to God's holy will. Such fidelity — the careful fulfilling, that is, of the duties belonging to one's state, is here called by St Paul modestia; the exact measure and form, as it were, of all the virtues. Interior peace might well find an obstacle in the sorrows and anxieties of the outward life; but St Paul would have us banish from our hearts all excessive solicitude, having recourse in humble confidence to God in prayer, and laying all our needs trustingly before him whom he calls the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation. Psalm Ixxxiv, which forms the concluding portion of the Introit, is in a special manner the canticle of the Redemption.

So that's what modestia means: "the careful fulfilling,. . . ,of the duties belonging to one's state". It always seemed somewhat oxymoronic for St Paul to advise us to let our "modesty" be known to all men. "Modesty" then, isn't quite proper for a 21st century translation. I wonder: was it proper for 16th century English? Used "modesty" to be more like Schuster's definition of "modestia"?