Fond memories of the Roman Catholic Missal

Date Published: {J}

Christmas is a time which very much depends on reminiscence … the Ghost of Christmas Past is much stronger because the magic of Christmas is built around childhood.

This recollection is prompted by the uncovering of a copy of the Missal on a bookshelf during a recent rummage. The 900 page book was a regular for many massgoers years ago and some were works of art in their presentation.

Contained in the book were the rituals of Mass, Feast Days, church ceremonies and regulations, but people personalised the huge prayer, and the decorations in their own way provided fascinating interest.

This personalisation of the Missals was turned into individual works of art by the fact that the covers were made from leather of the highest quality and the tooling and design of the covers was well capable of challenging the kind of Celtic artwork that was done in any number of other spheres of the art world.

Inside these formidable books were the prayers that were special to the church, the prayers of the individual Mass for Sundays and Holy Days, plus a guide to the rituals and prayers of special seasons such as Lent or indeed, Christmas.

At the time the Catholic Church celebrated practically all of its ceremonies in Latin, with the Missal helping the users by printing alongside and parallel the English translation of the ceremony and prayers, word-for-word.

So it was a lot of cases people who had last seen Latin in school saw it again on a Sunday morning or at special devotions which were then commonplace in the church. For instance you now never hear of Tenebrae, which was a hugely theatrical celebration of Christ’s passion, involving the gradual quenching of every light in the church, with the darkness being brought to an end by the priests who were present slamming shut their prayer books, and all the lights coming back on again.

At the time, Mass Servers were much more common than they are today – though girls could not be Mass Servers until very recent years. Chancers like me learned whole passages by heart without understanding a word of what was being said. And we sometimes did this six times a week when we were on duty for Mass service.

I can still recall from memory ‘hic est enim calix sanguinis mei’ the declaration by Christ on the occasion of the Last Supper when he told the Apostles that this was the chalice of his blood and that they should go on in perpetuity celebrating this.

Of course most sections of this went over our heads

until much later in life. It is hard to be solemn or serious about almost anything when there is a row going on about who should be the ‘thurifer’ – the one who lit the flame that generated the smoke for the incense to incense the altar.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.