SOME REFLECTIONS ON CONCELEBRATION
Saint Benedict Abbey
5 December 2017
First, allow me to express my gratitude to Abbot Xavier and the community of Saint Benedict for the opportunity to offer you some brief reflections on the subject of concelebration of the eucharistic liturgy in the Latin Church. I am all the more humbled to follow by some months the presentation by Abbot Cassian Folsom, OSB, which I will seek neither to repeat, dispute, nor nuance. I will, however, offer three presumptions and then three observations and an equal number of conclusions which I hope you might find helpful in your consideration of this important topic.But first, three Presuppositions.
1. The daily celebration of Mass by priests has been a part of our tradition for the past several centuries. Today, the Code of Canon Law encourages priests "to celebrate frequently; indeed, daily celebration is recommended earnestly…” (canon 904). The celebration of Mass may be fulfilled either by concelebration or celebrating Mass with a smaller group of the faithful, the latter being the right of any priest in good standing, no matter the circumstances (Cf. SC, 57.2.2)
2. The regulation of concelebration belongs to the Bishop and his guidance is always more important than any scholar, liturgist or individual priest. In addition, the guidelines and practice of the Holy Father, the Bishops of a given region and especially the Bishop of a particular Church is always instructive.
3. Recent interest in the question of concelebration has grown largely from the resurgence of the extraordinary form. The social media sites which recently exploded with rumors of a supposed plan by the Holy Father to require concelebration in Roman seminaries are remarkably the same sites campaigning for the suppression of the ordinary form in favor of the restoration of the extraordinary one.
Now don’t get me wrong here, as my work for the past twenty years has made abundantly clear, I believe that midcourse corrections in the implementation of the conciliar reform are both necessary and helpful. But the danger of concelebration becoming the latest arrow in the quiver of those opposing the conciliar reform is a real one.
My third presupposition, then (which has gone on entirely too long) is that the debate is too often driven by celebrities of the right in interviews, slogans or attacks on the very idea of a conciliar liturgical reform. Such contributions are, in my view, seldom helpful and often contribute more heat than light to any serious consideration of what the Church asks of us and how we can serve those ends.
THREE OBSERVATIONS
1. Concelebration in the early Church
We know a lot about how concelebration takes place today. We have documents and pictures, blogs, twitter feeds and lots of personal experience. We know what works and what doesn’t. We know what is appealing and what is not. We know what feels like it has flowed organically from previous forms and what seems disjunctive. We know a lot about today.
We also know a fair amount about what happened in the first centuries of the Church, inasmuch as we know anything about what really happened in the earliest days of the Church. Indeed, as Father Cassian demonstrated to you a couple months ago, we have a lot of texts, each of them written in an attempt to respond to some sort of disruption in the life of the Church. Most of them are laws or correctives or pronouncements, from which we can learn what the legislator wanted concelebration to be and what it was probably not doing at a given time and place.
So while we lack a complete understanding of the what or the why of concelebration in those earliest days, there are a few conclusions we can draw:
1. That concelebration, as the name implies, served in many cases as an expression of or guarantor of ecclesial unity. The Bishop of the North is welcome to join the Bishop of the South at the Altar for the Eucharist, thus expressing a certain unity of faith, belief and practice.
2. I believe we are also safe to say that concelebration was often an expression of the unity of the presbyterium with its episcopus. The fairly early tradition of the Bishop gathering his priests around him was another and more intensive expression of the unity and the dependency of priest upon Bishop and Bishop upon his priests which would come to be described in our own day as “the preminent expression of the the Church.”
3. The ritual forms which concelebration took were diverse from place to place. Who said what words with whom and what gestures, epicletic, indicative or epicletic, were as unique as all other other ritual elements in the Latin West and there was no real attempt to bring them into sync with each other.
4. The idea of presbyteral concelebration seemed generally restricted to monasteries or other religious communities of priests, since by definition that’s where you had a lot of priests and the question of concelebration would occur.
These are conclusions I draw from the texts which you have already examined with the good Abbot emeritus of Norcia. However, I would suggest that there might be something more to be learned from some iPhone snapshots, if you will, of what concelebration looked like in the first twelve hundred years of the life of the Church. However, before we take a quick look at three examples of such snapshots, a couple words of caution.
A second caution. The original intent of the artwork will often be different than the needs of the contemporary observer. In other words, we come at the artwork with a whole different set of suppositions and questions and experience than the original artist and original observers. Accidental depictions of gesture, vesture, arrangement or action, which may prove to be the most interesting of all.
Well, with these disclaimers in mind, let’s take a look at three images.
FIRST IMAGE
The form which the Church would take in the ninth century (which survives essentially intact today) is believed to have grown organically from its basic late sixth century arrangement. I use it as a type which was widely reproduced or at last reflected in the basic elements of a large number of basilicas from the fourth century on.
The area of the Church we are examining is what we currently call the presbyterium, with the Bishop’s cathedral in the center, a location identical to the position of the faldstool or curial chair of the civil magistrate who administered justice from the tribune of its secular precursor.
Growing out from the cathedra is a sort of presbyteral bench, here a kind of presbyteral bench on steroids. In most simpler basilicas it is a single bench, almost always touching the cathedra and then tracing the entire circumference of the apse wall. The precedent here is a similar structure, known as the subsellia, which would be occupied by the lesser officials of Roman civil courts.
So what does the presbyteral bench and cathedra tell us about concelebration? Nothing definitively. But it does show us that there is permanent seating in the presbyterium, a name applied early on to both the body of presbyters and the area of the Church in which this bench sits. It is a bench which comes to be known as presbyteral and it reflects the relationship between the Bishop and his priests as the same sort of relationship which previously existsed between greater and lesser civic officials in similar Roman basilicas.
Intriguing, but not definitive.
SECOND IMAGE
This gorgeous image is of a Bishop about to celebrate Mass with five deacons behind him and in front of him, seven singing priests. The book on the desk is inscribed in Latin with the introit for the first Sunday in Advent, beginning Ad te levavi animam meam. His right hand is raised, not in blessing, but to signal that he is ready to begin.
Notice the priests are all dressed in the same conical chasubles and extend their hands toward the altar in the same manner as the celebrant.
THIRD IMAGE
The Basilica, one of my favorites in all of Tuscany, was completed in the twelfth century. In passing, I might note that it includes a remarkable hanging stone tabernacle, but that’s for another talk. For our purposes I wish to examine a capitol on the second column from the front on the left hand side. Here is what it appears to depict: …at the center, a priest in conical chasuble stands at an altar with a large bowl-like chalice at the center. The priest’s hands are extended in what well may be an epiclesis, albeit with the right thumb and index finger joined.
To his left (our right) is a minister with one hand over his heart, looking intently at the action taking place at the altar. The figure of greatest interest, however, is to the left of the celebrant: another priest in in conical chasuble with his hands extended toward the offerings. Here, I would suggest, is clear evidence of a concelebration in this collegiate Church.
These three snapshots from the sixth, eleventh and twelfth centuries show that concelebration did exist for a little more than millennium in the Church. And while this iconographic evidence is isolated and less than comprehensive by its nature, it adds a visual element which can help us better enter into what concelebration looked like through the late middle ages.
2. The Vision of the Fathers of Vatican II
Now lets jump ahead four centuries to the 1570 Missal. Here, the practice of concelebration has practically disappeared from the Liturgy with the idiosyncratic exceptions of a Priest or Bishop concelebrating at the Mass of his ordination.
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council significantly expanded the occasions for concelebration, describing it as an appropriate manifestation of the unity of the priesthood. In order to highlight this unity, the Fathers extended this permission in three ways:
First to Holy Thursday, both at the Chrism Mass and the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, to Councils, Bishops’ Conferences, Synods and the Mass for the Blessing of an Abbot.
Secondly, ordinaries were empowered to decide whether concelebration was opportune at the principal Mass in any local community or any kind of meeting of priests. The principle criteria to be applied in the Bishop’s decision was whether
“the needs of the faithful” demanded that the priests celebrate other Masses for the faithful rather than particiopatre in the concelebration. The presumption, then, is that concelebration is the norm, unless the good of the faithful requires their ministry.
In fact, the third edition of the Roman Missal goes one step further by allowing that “all Priests belonging to the community who are obliged, as a matter of duty, to celebrate individually for the pastoral benefit of the faithful may also on the same day concelebrate at the conventual or community Mass.”
And these statements are followed by a remarkable principle, which further develops the conciliar decree: “it is preferable that Priests who are present at a celebration of the Eucharist, unless excused for a just reason, should usually exercise the function proper to their Order and hence take part as concelebrants, wearing sacred vestments. Otherwise, they wear their proper choir dress or a surplice over a cassock.” Usually concelebrate. Otherise, in choro.
In a religious community particularly, the norm, then, is clearly concelebration at the principle or conventual Mass, and even when it is necessary that priests celebrate individually for the faithful, they still concelebrate with their brothers whenever possible.
3. THREE CONCLUSIONS
So what, in fact, is the norm for concelebration in the Church today and does it accord with the vision of the Church?
First, concelebration is the norm. In religious communities, at gatherings with the Bishop, large funerals, seminaries or just about any time large numbers of priests gather, concelebration has become the norm. Increasingly, great attention is being paid by diocesan officials to the decorum of such celebrations with careful attention to the rubrics for concelebration the purchasing of diocesan chasubles, etc.
There are, admittedly, isolated exceptions. But the fact is that the practice, the teachings of the Bishops and the legislation of the Church, while allowing for the choice of priests to celebrate individually, especially when the needs of the faithful call for his ministry, the fact remains that since the first rite of concelebration was issued by the Holy See in 1972, the teaching has been consistent and clear:
“…great weight is to be given to concelebration of the eucharist. Concelebration is a strengthening of of the fraternal bonds of priests and of the whole community (Cf. LG 28, PO 8), because this manner of celebrating the sacrifice in which all share consciously, actively, and in the way proper to each is a clearer portrayal of the whole community acting together and is the preeminent manifestation of the church in the unity of sacrifice and priesthood and in the single giving of thanks around the one altar (Cf. SCR Decree Ecclesiae semper; Instruction Eucharisticum Mysterium, no. 44).
Secondly, this normative practice has been regulated and promoted by the Bishops.
The USCCB Guidelines for Concelebration of the Eucharist were approved by the United States Conference in 2003 and state that
“Concelebration should be understood as an appropriate way for priests to participate in the celebration of the Eucharist, expressive of their unique relationship with Christ the High Priest and of the unity of the priesthood.” And that “concelebration is always encouraged, “unless the welfare of the Christian faithful requires or urges otherwise.”(Code of Canon Law, Canon 902)
Likewise, the Bishops of England and Wales have reminded each of their Bishops that he enjoys the authority “to decide when concelebration was opportune…when a number of priests might be able to join together in a single celebration.” Those Guidelines begin, by the way, with a quote from SC 26: “Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations belonging to the Church, which is the ‘sacrament of unity,’ namely the holy people united and ordered under their bishops.”
Among the Diocesan guidelines for concelebration in this country, one Bishop decrees in 2003 simply that “It is preferable that priests who are present at a Eucharistic Celebration participate as concelebrants.” While another, in 2011, is even more specific: “unless the welfare of the Christian faithful requires or urges otherwise, concelebration is always encouraged.” (GCE #6-7).
Of the fourteen Diocesan Norms I have examined in preparation for this talk, each have expressed the view that concelebration is the norm and private celebrations the exception.
Third, and finally, I ask you to call to mind the morning Mass at Saint John’s Seminary, where every morning more than a dozen priest faculty members gather for the celebration of the Eucharist.
Like all seminaries, we are regulated by the USSCB’s Program for Priestly Formation, no. 116 of which states:
“All priests who are not bound to celebrate individually for the pastoral benefit of the faithful should concelebrate at the community Mass insofar as possible. Priest-faculty members concelebrate when they are present for Mass.”
The Holy See laid the ground work for this understanding in 1979 with its Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, writing that “…Mass must be the work of the entire seminary community. In it each and every person is to share according to his status. Thus, the priests who live in the seminary and who are not bound by pastoral obligation to celebrate Mass somewhere else should, as a praiseworthy act, concelebrate. As deacons, acolytes, and lectors should do their respective tasks…”
Which brings us back to Pope Francis, whose rumored actions regarding concelebration and the Roman Seminaries has not yet shown his head above the parapet. Yet the Holy Father’s motivations for such an action have been evident from the moment he warned us about the “unending challenge to overcome individualism and experience diversity as a gift, seeking the unity of the presbyterate, which is a sign of God’s presence in community life.”
So will a new decree regarding Roman Seminaries emerge? Who knows, and such gossip is seldom helpful to the kind of mature and irenic discussion you have invited me to contribute to this blessed house.
All I know is that concelebration works at Saint John’s Seminary and, according to the judgment of the Bishops in most places and most times in the Church of our day.
