capability of most missions. Nevertheless, there is much in favour of a
return to plain chant. The old idea which was involved in Bishop
Douglass's description of a Requiem a century ago that "the Responses
were in plain chant except the _Libera_, which was in music," calls for
combating, for Gregorian Chant is in the highest sense music. The chief
reason that people do not always take to it is that it requires a
certain training to appreciate it. If plain chant is to be restored, the
first step is to train not only the clergy, as is already being done,
but more importantly still, the schoolmasters. Recently the writer heard
a high mass in a country church sung in plain chant by the school
children, who had been trained by their master, and not only was the
effect most devotional, but the congregation was already beginning to
join in the singing--a consummation devoutly to be wished. If this could
be done regularly, we should perhaps see our way to the restoration of
the liturgy in popular estimation, and an incidental advantage not to be
lost sight of would be that it would limit the duration of the services.
[2]
The case of Vespers is different from that of sung mass. It was never
meant for an evening service of the modern type, and used to be sung
early in the afternoon. From the time when vernacular evening services
began to come in--which was about the middle of last century [3]--the
popularity of Vespers has steadily declined. There are now but few
churches where they are ever attempted; and such services as _Tenebrae_
in Holy Week or the _Dirge_ on All Souls' Day seem to be almost limited
to cathedral churches. This is of course to be regretted, and it is
probable that a good deal more might be done to revive the singing of
Vespers; but it may be doubted whether it would be really popular in
England as a regular thing. [4]
Now a priest should love the liturgy, both for his own spiritual life
and for that of his people; and likewise for the outward glory of God,
for it is the official life of the Church. The Puseyites boasted to
Cardinal Wiseman that great credit was due to them for reintroducing
high mass (as they considered it). The Cardinal replied that still
greater credit was due to Catholics who had never lost it. A priest
should be educated in the liturgical sense that he in turn may educate
his people. If he has little taste for liturgy he is wanting in the
fulness of his vocation. It is certainly not an over-statement that much
more trouble might be taken with the liturgical services than is often
the case. To learn to be at home on the sanctuary and to move about
quietly and in a dignified way requires a little effort, but presents no
great difficulty. Yet often we see it far otherwise. So, also, every
priest should be able at least to chant the prayers in a proper tone,
and this will make a great difference to the general effect. If he is
musical, so much the better. Many priests are not, and for them it
involves a good deal of trouble and will be only moderately successful;
but it is hard to believe that the prayers we sometimes hear represent
really the best that the priest can do. An unmusical priest may be
excused for finding the Preface and _Pater Noster_ a difficulty, but it
should not be insuperable.
Although, however, a high mass, or at least _Missa Cantata_, may be
regarded as the ideal even for small missions, there are undoubtedly
many in which this is impossible. In such cases the chief Sunday low
mass can be and often is performed with solemnity--such as the lighting
of the "sixes" on the altar, and the number of servers increased--which
may be very devotional. And it may be accompanied by singing, provided
this is in Latin. [5] And in large churches, all the Sunday masses
should be celebrated as solemnly as possible. Let it be remembered that
many persons always hear one of the low masses only. For this reason it
is desirable that at least the more essential notices--announcing coming
feasts, or fast days, or special services--should be read at every mass,
as well as the Epistle and Gospel of the Sunday. Where possible, even a
short five minutes' sermon serves a very good purpose. The whole service
can be made devotional, and the large Communion makes itself necessarily
so. The well-known description of Father Dalgairns, in his book on Holy
Communion, is worth quoting as illustrating this fact:--
"Enter into a London chapel on a Sunday when not even the few attempts
at magnificence which our poverty permits us are displayed. Let it be in
the depths of the City, in an old-fashioned chapel, with Protestant
pews. Here the church has no beauty that one should desire her. No organ
peals, and no sweet-toned choir chants. Yet there is a marvel which
kings and prophets thirsted to see and did not see. They throng to the
altar; the priest in a low voice repeats the blessed words and gives to
each his God. No saints are there, but good ordinary Christians, fearing
God in the midst of the world; some are even great sinners who have just
been cleansed in the sacrament of Penance. The same scene goes on all
over even this heretical land. No glorious bells ring out over the
length and breadth of England, from spire and steeple, to announce the
adorable sacrifice, but in our great wicked towns you may count the
communicants by tens of thousands. In Birmingham and Sheffield,
Liverpool and Manchester, they are crowding to receive their Lord. The
same blessed work is going on in lowly country missions scattered up and
down the country, where a few worshippers still congregate to worship
the God of their fathers, in venerable chapels under the roof of
Catholic gentlemen, the descendants of martyrs, where the Blessed
Sacrament has found a refuge through centuries of persecution." [6]
But the priest will have to conduct many services which are only partly
liturgical, or not liturgical at all. Of such a nature is the ordinary
Sunday evening service at most of our churches, or the weekday
Benedictions, meetings of Confraternities, etc. Here again there is room
for improvement in the manner they are conducted. Many a priest
"gabbles" the prayers--especially the Hail Marys of the Rosary--in a
manner which makes them quite inaudible, and is a real hindrance to the
people joining. It conveys the idea that he is discharging a duty for
the sake of his people, without any idea of praying himself. Yet surely
the prayers which are good enough for them are good enough for him; and
in truth there is no more moving or devotional sight than that of a
priest praying together with his people. The practice of utilising the
time during Benediction to say Office is regrettable if only for this
reason--that it destroys the community of prayer between priest and
people, and he loses the grace of the Congregational Act. At the
Eucharistic Congress in 1908, when the people assembled at each side of
the street in their thousands, one of the most touching sights was the
arrival of groups or congregations led by their priests, reciting the
Rosary or other devotions or singing hymns with him. No more vivid
representation could be imagined of the good shepherd leading his flock,
as is customary in southern or mountainous countries, which formed one
of the best known of the parables of our Lord.
There is certainly a need for more variety in our popular evening
services: people get tired of the perpetual Rosary, sermon and
Benediction; but until something better is forthcoming, we must make the
best of what we have. Evening services are comparatively new in other
countries besides England, as formerly there was no satisfactory means
of lighting the churches, and there is now room for their development.
In some smaller churches Night Prayers are an agreeable variety: the
Cure of Ars used to say them with his people every evening. There is
something to be said also for the old English devotion of the Jesus
Psalter; and in Lent, Stations of the Cross are usually popular. But on
the whole, there is a want of suitable variety in the first part of the
service. For the concluding part, nothing could be more beautiful than
the Benediction service, which has crystallised itself into a definite
form for this country.
Finally, it is worth while to put in a word in favour of an effort to
keep the church open all day. The importance of this practice has been
emphasised not only in our own Synods of Westminster, [7] but also in
the new Codex, [8] which orders it for at least several hours each day.
With us there are sometimes difficulties in the way, especially when the
presbytery is at a distance from the church. Sometimes, however, these
difficulties are unduly magnified. Even the danger of occasionally
losing a few shillings from the collection boxes would seem to be not
too great a price for satisfying the devotion of so many who long to
visit the Blessed Sacrament from time to time. A Catholic church should
have as its characteristic that it is _alive_; and even when no service
is going on, the daily life of the church shows itself. Time was, and
not so many years ago, when a church left open would run the risk of
being maliciously desecrated: and that is probably in part at least
responsible for the bad tradition in some of our churches in this
respect; but it is to be hoped that we have got past that danger by now.
[1] That is, not as a rule. In the days of the so-called "shilling
opera" at Warwick Street, some of the Italian type of masses were in
vogue.
[2] As an extreme example of the opposite spirit and the decay of
liturgical sense may be quoted that of a church a few years ago on Palm
Sunday, which fell that year on March 16, the only music being at the
distribution of the Palms, when the people sang the hymn "Glorious St.
Patrick." On another occasion at quite a large church, one Maundy
Thursday, falling that year a few days after March 19, and within the
supposed Octave of St. Joseph, when we came hoping to find _Tenebrae_,
instead there were popular devotions before the statue of St. Joseph,
which in consequence of Passiontide, was covered with a purple veil, but
had lights burning before it.
[3] About half a century earlier a system of English psalm-singing was
introduced by some of the gentry in their chapels. Owing to the nature
of its origin--for it was at a time when the laity were in opposition to
their Bishops and adopted the name "Cisalpines"--these English psalms
did not at that time receive Episcopal sanction; but they were not
forbidden, and were in use in some chapels down to comparatively modern
times. In the home of Cardinal Vaughan at Courtfield, in Herefordshire,
they were in regular use. In his youth he learnt to love them, and when
Bishop of Salford he introduced something similar in his Cathedral, with
considerable success; and the experiment was copied elsewhere. When he
came to London as Archbishop, he tried to introduce them there; but they
were not taken up, and are now rarely heard anywhere. Nevertheless, the
"Come let us adore"--an adaptation of the _Venite exultemus_--found its
way into the Manual of Prayers and has thus secured a permanent place
among our devotional exercises.
[4] The practice in some few churches of having votive Vespers of our
Lady every Sunday has little to recommend it. They are in truth private
devotions, and ought to be sung as such, without any liturgical
accessories. If there is, as often, a celebrant in cope, either he will
be vested in a colour incongruous to the season--as, for example, a
white cope in Lent or Advent, or even on a green Sunday--or, what is
worse, he will be celebrating the office of our Lady in green, red or
purple, which is still more incongruous. Moreover, since the reform of
the Calendar under Pius X, the proper liturgical psalms at Vespers are
nearly always the same, which removes the difficulty which used to drive
people to votive Vespers of our Lady, in days when the liturgical
Vespers were so various and complicated.
[5] So the _Motu Proprio_ of Pius X provides. In the case of children's
masses the singing of English hymns seems to be sanctioned by custom.
[6] P. 403. (Ed. Duffy. 1903.)
[7] "Ad hanc devotionem magis magisque fovendam, vehementer optandum est
ut Ecclesiae aditus vel continuo diu, vel si ruri sit, per aliquot
horarum spatium fidelibus pateat; et doceantur omnes amantissimum
Salvatorem in Ss. Eucharistia latentem invisere, adorare, ac fervidis
precibus supplicare, animamque simul communione spirituali refocillare"
(_I Westmonast_. xviii. 9).
[8] "Ecclesiae in quibus Sanctissima Eucharistia asservatur, praesertim
paroechiales, quotidie per aliquot saltem horas fidelibus pateant"
(Canon 1266).
CONFERENCE IX
THE PRIEST'S PASTORAL WORK (_continued_)
PREACHING
LET us begin this Conference by propounding a question for
consideration. The preaching of the Word of God is a sacred part of the
priest's pastoral work, and not the least sacred part of it. Yet the
average priest speaks of it as though it were a task irksome in itself,
to be got through somehow or other, and always a nuisance. If anyone is
available and is kind enough to replace him in the pulpit, or if he gets
off by the timely arrival of a Bishop's pastoral, he is unreservedly
pleased. It is true that he is usually a hard-worked man, and that if he
gets off any of his work, it is a relief to him; but in the case of a
sermon he is far more relieved than in any other case. Does this look as
if he appreciated at its true value the pastoral work of preaching the
Word of God?
In order to get a true answer to this question, we shall probably not be
far wrong in seeking it in the personal history of the individual priest
as preacher, to see whether he has imperceptibly learnt an inadequate
view of his office.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that his early sermons were simply a
struggle against breaking down. He was naturally nervous the first few
times that he found himself in so novel a position, standing before a
congregation all listening to his words. In order to nerve himself up
for the occasion, he has taken no small trouble in writing out in full
his discourse and committing it to memory. His chief anxiety is lest his
memory should fail him--which sooner or later it is sure to do, not
once, but often, and he is anxious as to what will happen the first time
that this shall occur. He gets through his first sermon, and is then
anxious about his secondhand so on. Very soon he finds that it is
practically impossible for him to write out all his sermons, and he
contents himself with an analysis; for as time goes on, he is acquiring
a certain facility in expressing himself _ex tempore_, and the frequency
of his sermons is gradually curing him of nervousness. Perhaps the first
time that he lost the thread of his discourse he covered his difficulty
better than he might have hoped, and this helps to give him confidence.
Then sooner or later it will occur that some unexpected pressure of
work--a sick call on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning, let us say--
prevents him from preparing his sermon at all in a systematic way, and
he finds himself face to face with the duty of preaching with only a few
minutes to collect his thoughts. With commendable trust in Providence,
he says a fervent prayer for Divine assistance, boldly ascends the
pulpit, and perhaps surprises himself at the facility with which he
discharges his task. Would that he always bore in mind that if our
Heavenly Father helps us in a special way when we have to speak for Him
and His kingdom on the pressure of an emergency, this does not dispense
us from using ordinary means on a future occasion when the emergency has
passed away. It was for such occasions--when the Apostles were to be
delivered up to the hands of their enemies--and for those occasions only
that He told them to "take no thought of how or what to speak; for it
shall be given you in that hour what to speak." [1]
If we may venture to give a natural explanation, it would be that we all
have a certain class of thoughts in our mind which, under the influence
of sudden or strong stimulus, take shape in words. If we trust to these
time after time, we shall, to say the least, lay ourselves open to great
monotony and self-repetition in our preaching. And this is what often
occurs as a young priest gradually gains confidence, and begins to think
that he can preach without serious or long preparation.
The above description might be continued, but enough has been said for
the present purpose, which is to call attention to this point. At the
beginning the priest's preaching has been a struggle to get through
without breaking down. When he has been sufficiently long at it for this
danger to have passed away, he still has the practical feeling--his aim
is to fill up the requisite amount of time with respectably good matter,
so as to discharge his duty. It has hardly at all come before him in the
light of a privilege to speak the Word of God, a source of grace to
himself as well as to others, an expression of his own spiritual
thoughts put forth for the benefit and instruction of those entrusted to
his pastoral charge; and this is to a large extent responsible for the
want of fervour and of soul and interest in his sermons.
It is always easier to state an evil than to suggest a remedy; but it is
something towards the desired end if we are able to diagnose the true
cause of our difficulty. The conclusion urged is that it is not enough
to insist on an elaborate direct preparation; on a scientific knowledge
of the way to order a discourse; on rules of elocution and rhetoric;
highly desirable as some of these may be. Still less would one ask a
priest to write and learn all his sermons, which even if practically
possible, is not in any way desirable. The true remedy is rather to
teach our young priests the spiritual side of preaching, to train them
to look on the sermon as part of their pastoral office. If this view is
planted in their minds at the outset of their priestly career, it will
grow rapidly and strongly, as by actual contact with their parishioners
they feel their own power for good in the pulpit, and see before their
eyes their people growing and living on the strength of words heard in
their sermons. It is this consciousness which will elevate the duty in
their minds from an irksome task to that of one of the most privileged
of their pastoral duties.
In this point of view we see the key of the remark often made that the
remote preparation for preaching is more important than the proximate.
By the remote preparation is meant the priest's daily life, his union
with God, his supernatural views of the things of this world, and the
acquiring of his store of thoughts from his prayer, his meditation, his
spiritual reading, and, not least important, his pastoral work among the
poor, the sick and the dying. "We cannot but speak the things which we
have seen and heard." [2] If the truths of faith are so vividly present
to us that God's dealings with mankind are as things we have actually
seen and heard, we shall long that others may share our privilege, and
we shall feel the greatest joy in instructing them in Christ's Name. But
if this spirit be wanting, all human eloquence will be of no avail. The
value of the sermon is the reflection of the life of the preacher.
In considering the question of reading and study in preparation for the
pulpit, we naturally turn first to the two-fold branches of Scripture
and Dogma as that which will help chiefly to give substance and backbone
to our sermons.
It is astonishing how little use many preachers make of the inspired
Word of God, containing as it does in itself not only the essence of all
religious history and dogma, but so many of the words of Christ Himself.
Limiting our observations to the Gospels alone, it is an extraordinary
grace we have received in having such full records of His words and acts
at least during His public life. This in itself enables us to have a
real personal knowledge and love of our Redeemer. We should expect our
sermons to be full of His words and sayings, His parables, His
illustrations, the example of His works; and that all our moral lessons
should be illustrated and driven home by His words. Yet in practice we
hear sermon after sermon with no more than a few texts from Scripture
scattered through them, and these often isolated and without their
context; and when we find a preacher really familiar with our Lord's
life and words, we comment on it as quite remarkable.
It is probable that this is largely due to our habit of quoting isolated
texts in support of dogmatic truths, and our very reverence for them as
the inspired Word has led us to rest on the actual words and to lose
sight of their general context. Very probably also Cardinal Manning's
remark may be true, that since the sixteenth century there has been a
tendency to over-strictness against the popular use of the Scriptures as
a sort of recoil or reaction against Protestantism. At the present day,
however, there is happily a reaction against this in all countries, and
a movement in favour of circulating at least the New Testament more
freely in the vernacular. With us we can date it from the issue of the
sixpenny New Testament by Burns and Gates, and the Penny Gospels of the
Catholic Truth Society; but the cheap Gospel texts in the vernacular
which have appeared in some other countries--notably those issued by St.
Luke's Society in Rome itself--have outdone anything we have in England.
One of our chief and foremost duties then is to familiarise ourselves
with the words and actions of our Lord in English. There are many texts
with which we are familiar in Latin, but we seldom make use of them
because of the labour of turning them into English in the middle of a
sermon, when our mind is already intently occupied. Let us know them in
English for the sake of our people whom we wish to instruct. As to how
this is best done opinions may differ. Some recommend learning texts by
heart so as to have them always at hand. Others would find this method
too mechanical, and would prefer to trust to their own reading of and
meditation on the Gospels to bring about the desired result. They would
argue that he will have more command over texts that he has used and
pondered over than over those he has simply learnt by heart.
It is wonderful how the simple quoting of Gospel words elevates our
sermons. The people want the words of our Lord, His acts, His parables,
the lessons He intended to teach; they want to hear of the collateral
setting of His life, the gradual development of His work, the kind of
people He was teaching, and so forth. Then they should hear the teaching
of St. Paul, his words to his converts, his warnings against abuses, his
doctrinal and disciplinary instructions. Then also they like to hear
from time to time some of the Old Testament--either the history of God's
chosen people, or the beauties of the Messianic prophecies--of Isaias
and others; or the psalmody of David; or the Sapiential books of
Solomon; or the works of Jeremias and the other prophets. Mere memory
work will not do all this for us; we must ourselves be accustomed to
think of the Gospels, to meditate on our Lord's words, to see the
meaning of His parables, and so forth. Here is prayer enough and work
enough to last us a lifetime, and be continually bearing fruit.