The church slowly developed customs of reserving some portion of the eucharistic sacrifice for the sake of the dying. Today’s custom of placing this portion in a tabernacle for prayer and adoration by the faithful cannot be traced back much beyond the year 1,000, much to almost everyone’s surprise. There is simply no historical evidence of the Blessed Sacrament being present in a church for the purpose of having the faithful…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION By the early 1950s some scholars were calling for the restoration of Communion of the faithful on Good Friday, since by then only a priest received, consuming the host from the Holy Thursday repository. In 1955 the new Good Friday liturgy was timed to begin at three o’clock everywhere, and included the option of Holy Communion, but without the Precious Blood that had originally been part of…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION In brushing up for “Catholic Jeopardy,” it might help to know that there is only one feast on the calendar for a thing, rather than a person or mystery. It’s for a chair: Saint Peter’s chair in fact. After the Resurrection, there can be no doubt that the disciples reserved a special place for Simon Peter in the upper room. Later, Peter became the bishop…

When the custom of the stational liturgies was revived in the city of Rome in the early days of the twentieth century, the papal liturgy for Good Friday was appropriately housed in the stational church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. The church is off the tourist track today, but true pilgrims would never miss it. It stands on the grounds of the Sessorian Palace, the…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION It’s still months away, but parish ministers, especially if they are involved in the catechumenate, have their eyes on Lent and the Easter Triduum. Until fairly recent times, the last few days before Easter were shaped by an awareness of the Passion, but the faithful were left to their own devices about how to engage with these mysteries. A thousand years…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION As soon as Christmas ends, people begin planning for Easter! Originally, the source of our Paschal Triduum was but a single liturgy extending from Saturday sundown to sun-rise on Easter Sunday. The two days leading up to the liturgy were days of fast, not only for the elect, but for the church preparing to baptize them. A fifth-century…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION By now, the first Christmas carols are heard in the home, but usually not yet in church. What is a “carol” anyway? Originally, a carol was any kind of communal song sung at a festival such as a harvest. By the thirteenth century or so, carols were associated with household celebrations. “Carol” comes from the Old French carula, meaning a circular dance. Carols weren’t for church, since…