Inorganic Liturgy: The Offertory

Pope Benedict XVI, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, laments a fundamental misunderstanding of the Second Vatican Council's intentions for liturgical renewal: the Order of Mass promulgated after Vatican II was not what the council intended. Boniface Luykx [1915 - 2004] would have agreed. Luykx was the only expert on liturgy who both attended the Council and spoke out concerning the truth of subsequent liturgical developments. Being Eastern Rite, it seems it was easier for him to speak the truth concerning the major failure of the liturgical reform movement. He gave this address on the 25th Anniversary of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, December 4, 1988, at a parish in Winchester, Massachusetts at St. Eulalia parish:

When the rite was ready, I was there to help to approve it, to discern about the value, twice in a college, a Jesuit college in [the name here has been whited out in the original typewritten copy], north of Rome. And there we celebrated the new rite of Mass already many years before it was promulgated. Well, we found that they had gone too far. The task was to restore the primitive Roman liturgy. They did not do that. They made up another liturgy. So we protested there, it was the first time. Then the Pope, Paul VI, was so unsatisfied that he kept the document three years on his desk, and the whole world was waiting. And he said, "I cannot promulgate it." Then he called in several scholars but also six Protestant ministers in order to ask them, "Would you Protestants feel at home with that?" And they said "yes." And then he saw in that a proof that it was good. Well, we would say now, this was a proof that it was not good. That is the difference.

What is this primitive Roman liturgy? It is from the time of Pope Gregory the Great, from the 6th century, and is described in a collection called the Roman Ordos (Ordines Romani); in particular, the First Roman Ordo (Ordo Romanus Primus). The first part of this Ordo describes a Roman stational Mass, so called because the Pope would celebrate solemn Mass in one after another of the four greater and the three minor basilicas during the 4th and 5th centuries (St. John Lateran, St. Peter, St. Paul Outside the Walls, St. Mary Major, the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, St. Lawrence, and the Twelve Apostles). Here is what Rev. Gerard Ellard, S.J. (teacher at St. Mary's College, Kansas, and one of the founders of the National Liturgical Conference) said about this 6th century form of the Roman Rite Mass, in Christian Life and Worship (The Bruce Publishing Company, first published in 1950):

What Augustine sketched in theory [10th book of the City of God] in the early fifth century, Gregory at the end of the sixth reduced to perfect practice. It happens that we possess a detailed account of a papal feast-day Mass of an age not long after Gregory's, and scholars agree that, barring a detail here and there, it shows us Gregory's own Mass. On reading this ancient sketch of Gregory's Mass, one does not wonder that the Church for more than thirteen hundred years has regarded it as the most perfect expression of her Eucharistic worship ever realized. The full sacrificial consciousness on the part of the worshippers there had its counterpart in the chief fruit of their worship, an ennobling sense of the Christian solidarity (p. 123).

Since Ellard was one of the main proponents of the liturgical movement, what happened between 1950 and 1970, a mere 20 years? The answer is that inorganic changes were made to the Mass. While somewhat hard to define, inorganic changes can be described as innovations, that is, new items never used before, or deformations, changes made which twist the original into something new. Somewhere along the line, the reformers decided that the Gregorian liturgy of the 6th century, previously seen as the standard for any reform of the Traditional Roman Rite of Mass, should be abandoned. Since the oldest known text of the Roman Rite is that of Gregory, the fragmentary descriptions of the liturgy from before the 6th century can only give partial glimpses of any details. As such, a reconstruction based on them can only yield artificial results.

There was one principle in particular that the reformers were highly attracted to, namely individual freedom to celebrate the Mass as they saw fit, rather than based on any prescribed text or rubrics: "when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen" (St. Justin Martyr, "First Apology," Chapter LXVII, "Weekly Worship of the Christians").

Louis Bouyer warned what would happen if the Mass were reformed without regard to tradition:

Rash modernism, at the other extreme, would, by reaction, awaken in the people the desire for a "new" liturgy -- a so-called "living" liturgy - and then satisfy that desire with "paraliturgies" which spring full-fledged from their sponsors' minds, regard having been paid, not to tradition, but only, under the pretext of meeting the needs of the present, to expediency or even to momentary fashion... Neither is it [Catholic tradition] a changeable thing to be remodeled at will either by individuals or by an authority which, if it did such a thing, would be as unfettered and irresponsible as in individual (Liturgical Piety, 1955, p. 72).

He quotes the following from Yugve Brilioth's Eucharistic Faith and Practice:

[A]ny period in the history of the Church in which a tendency arises to make such a simplification and logical ordering of the Eucharist is shown by this very fact to be a period of decay, preparing only for further corruption. (p. 75).

I want to focus on a single part of the reformed Mass: the offertory. The offertory is composed of three main parts:

1. The bringing of the gifts to the clergy. Incidentally, an entire thesis has been written on the fact that there has never before been a laymen’s procession with the gifts inside the church building ("The offertory rite in the Ordo Romanus primus: a study of its bearing on the so-called ‘offertory procession,’" by George J. Booth, 1948, Thesis, Catholic University of America). My next article will focus on this aspect of the offertory, and hopefully give a summary of Booth’s thesis.
2. The taking of the gifts by the clergy, for which Hebrew has a particular word, nagesh.
3. The offering up of the gifts by the priest and the accompanying prayers. (These are the least organic parts of the "reformed" liturgy).

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, we learn the following concerning the offertory:

1. There has never been a public Roman offertory prayer (it was always said silently).
2. The Oremus [let us pray] is not part of the offertory; this is all that is left of the traditional rite of the Prayer of the Faithful (except for Good Friday).
3. The primitive Roman liturgy used the prayers called "secrets" as the offertory prayers. The secrets ask God to receive the gifts (The secret prayers are said silently because a psalm was originally sung at the same time).
4. The rubric of the Apostolic Constitutions says that the bishop prays silently "by himself" while the deacons bring him the gifts to the altar: "But let two of the deacons, on each side of the altar, hold a fan, made up of thin membranes, or of the feathers of the peacock, or of fine cloth, and let them silently drive away the small animals that fly about, that they may not come near to the cups. Let the high priest, therefore, together with the priests, pray by himself."

Here are the secrets from the traditional and reformed Roman Rite Missals for the 4 Sundays of Lent:

I have placed a line through 11 words, which have been excised in the new rite: solemnly, Lent, pray, abstinence, favor, cleanse, sanctify, servants (priests), body, soul, devotion. I have also highlighted two words not found in the traditional versions which have been added in the reformed prayers: a reference to the resurrection, and a reference to the salvation of the world. Concerning the word offertory itself, there are three substitutions and a single deletion of the term: offer becomes bring, offerings becomes Eucharist, offering is deleted, offerings becomes gifts.

Thus, the primitive function of the secret prayer, which is that of the offertory prayer of the primitive Roman Rite, has been watered down, if not eliminated, in the so-called prayers over the gifts of the reformed Roman Rite.

In the Traditional Latin Mass, there are multiple prayers from the 10th century which were not part of the Primitive Roman Rite. They are said by the priest silently during the offering of the gifts to God.

1. The proper (changes based on calendar) prayer known as the secret
2. Receive, O holy Father... (Suscipe sancte Pater)
3. O God, who wondrously ennobled... (Deus, qui humanae substantiae)
4. We offer to you... (Offerimus tibi, Domine)
5. In humility.... (In spiritu humilitatis)
6. Come, O Sanctifier... (Veni, sanctificator)
7. I wash my hands... (Lavabo inter innocentes)
8. Receive, O holy Trinity... (Suscipe, sancta Trinitas)

In the leaflet missalette used by the people in the pews during the reformed Roman Rite (1970), the first prayer is no longer privately said by the priest. This violates the primitive Roman tradition in which the offertory prayers were said silently. The prayers for the offering of the host (bread) [prayer #2] and chalice (wine) [prayer #3] have been replaced with modern Jewish prayers. This ignores the fact that Christian liturgy is older than these prayers. The earliest written record of the Passover service of the Jews in proximity to the birth of Christianity is from the 3rd century, as described in the Mishnah (the precursor to the Talmud). By then the Jewish priesthood had ceased to exist for over 100 years, being replaced with laymen and lay-oriented prayers, rather than priestly prayers.

The justification for replacing the traditional offertory prayers with the Jewish prayers is that the offertory in primitive times had nothing to do with "sacrifice." As such, the sacrificial prayers (#s 4-8) listed above were either deleted or modified so that sacrifice and oblation are not mentioned. Those which have been retained as prayers said silently by the priest are not to be found in the missalette. They only appear in the priest's missal for the reformed Mass.

The Samaritan Passover is the best clue we have to the traditional Semitic practice of the Passover. Since they have maintained a priesthood up until the present time, it is much more likely that their prayers preserve the traditional theology of offering. The prayers for the feast of unleavened bread (which follows Passover; there is no slaughtered sheep, which has been eaten the previous day, but unleavened bread is offered, just like at the Last Supper) exhibit the following characteristics:

1. The priest's offering to God relates to the concept of "acceptance of the offering" as a sacrifice.
2. The people's offering brought to the priest emphasizes the concept of intention and gift.

Biblical Analysis of the Offertory

What do the biblical roots of the offertory show us? The offering itself is called qorban, which as we have seen, comes from the Hebrew verb, qereb, to bring, to draw near, to approach. We also saw in a previous article how qorbono is the name for the Divine Liturgy among those Christians whose tongue is Aramaic. We also see that the offering, insofar as it was found acceptable, and was given to the priests to be transferred to the altar, was eminently sacrificial in nature:

• The word used for handing over the gift to the priest is nagash, translated normally as deliver: "And when thou offerest it to the Lord, thou shalt deliver it to the hands of the priest." Leviticus 2:8
• A related root is nagiyd, meaning ruler: "...and thou shalt anoint him to be ruler over my people Israe.l" Exodus 29:37
• Another related root is nagaph, which means "to hurt, strike, beat". 2 Ch 13:20
• The final related root nagar means to pour out: Psalms 75:8: "For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup of strong wine full of mixture. And he hath poured it out from this to that."

Our Lord was delivered to the Sanhedrin for trial as a false ruler or messiah of Israel. He was stricken by the Romans, and poured out his blood for us on the cross.

New Testament analysis of the Offertory

When St. Luke (22:17) describes the Last Supper, he uses the word took, as in took bread, which is the Greek root for the word "acceptable". In relation to the offertory, this shows that the Our Lord's taking of the bread in his hands is a priestly act, showing that the bread was acceptable for the celebration of the Passover sacrificial meal.

Dechomai - to take, i.e., with the hand "And having taken (L. accepto) the chalice, he gave thanks, and said: Take, and divide it among you..."

Dechomai is the Greek root for: dektos, acceptable. And Greek is not alone. The Latin accept, take = accipere, and acceptable is in Latin accipiendus.

Phl 4:18 "But I have all, and abound: I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things you sent, an odour of sweetness, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God." (Latin acceptam)

Euprosdektos: from Greek eu - "well" and dektos "take" (see above) - Rom 15:16 "That I should be the minister of Christ Jesus among the Gentiles; sanctifying the gospel of God, that the oblation of the Gentiles may be made acceptable and sanctified in the Holy Ghost." (L. accepta)

Rom 15:31 "That I may be delivered from the unbelievers that are in Judea, and that the oblation of my service may be acceptable in Jerusalem to the saints." (L. accepta).

1 Pe 2:5 "Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." (L. acceptabiles).

So we see that the offering of a sacrificial gift in the Old Testament was eminently sacrificial. From the moment that the priest in the temple accepted the gift delivered to him from the person bringing it, to the time that the priest brought it to the main priest who was offering sacrifice at the altar that day, the offering was called an oblation (sacrificial gift). Our Lord's passion and his taking of the bread into his hands at the Last Supper (the first Christian offertory), is the basis for the Roman Rite Mass.

Another fact ignored by the reformers is that the pre-Gregorian liturgy in Rome, as recording in the Apostolic Constitutions, shows that the offertory was seen as sacrificial in nature. Gregory Dix in "The Shape of the Liturgy", states that the Apostolic Constitutions is the oldest reference to the Christian offertory that we have: The deacons bring the phosphora (offering) to the bishop. Prosphora is only used in one verse of the Old Testament, where it translates the Hebrew Minchah, meal offering. (see Psalm 40:7). Minchah refers primarily to the grain offering, but includes any offering which is bloodless. Focusing on the action, the "taking" of the bread, and the cup of wine, without asking what the bread and wine are (a sacrificial offering) must be considered an inorganic development of the liturgy. It would not surprise me to see in the future that through the initiative of Benedict XVI, some of the traditional offertory prayers of the Roman Mass are recovered.

Ed Snyder
March 11, Anno Domini MMVII