Today being Septuagesima Sunday we followed the ancient custom of burying the Alleluia. You bury the Alleluia because you do not say the Alleluia during Lent. And Septuagesima Sunday is the start of the pre-Lent season.
Let me break for a gripe. It does not seem right and just that we are heading into Lent, I have to say that. What with the virus and everything we have hardly gotten to celebrate Christmas. The inner time clock is off, you know? There was hardly any Christmas and yet there is Lent.
However.
Still Lent is on the way and so we had to bury the Alleluia. And I followed the by now ancient custom of lettering the Alleluia that would be buried at church. I have written about this before in other years. Every year I make the Alleluia and every year the church loses it.
Fie on the church, fie!
However. I sort of do not mind making the Alleluia all over again because I keep improving it. The Alleluia up above, I made that first this year. But then I just wanted to do it over. I was listening to Mozart's "Exsultate, Jubilate," which ends in the famous "Alleluia." And after I had listened to it twice, I sat down and did a new Alleluia. And I thought it was better.
It was more free!
I liked it so much I put it on Redbubble.
You can get it on coasters.
And on a laptop case.
Or on a T-shirt.
Isn't that great? Maybe it is a good thing after all that they lost my earlier Alleluias.
However. That still does not make it right. Before Mass this morning I took the Alleluia out of my sketchbook. Which, may I point out, it was on a huge piece of paper, 18 by 24 inches, something like that. I added a penciled note on the back. I put my name and phone number. And I wrote, "Please do not throw out."
We will have to wait to Easter -- when the Alleluia is resurrected -- to find out if my note did any good.
I bet I do not see it again!
2 comments:
I’ve never seen the burying of the Alleluia! I usually go to OLHC for Latin Mass, but I missed yesterday. And I don’t think they do it there, anyway. So, can you give us a little more detail on how this is done? Is it put in a tube? Actually buried, with shovels? During Mass, or before or after? Thanks!
Philothea, thanks for your question! I love talking about this. The ceremony is pretty new to me too -- it's not as if most of us grew up with it. The way we did it at St. Anthony's was, that Alleluia I drew was on a big piece of paper, and the priest carried it around the church in a procession before Mass began. Then they "buried" it at a side alter, beneath the white altar cloth. If it is like last year, you can kind of see it through the cloth. At Easter they bring it out ... I am not sure when in the Mass they do that but I will find out.
There are some churches that actually bury it in the ground and dig it up! And I hear that sometimes it is not an actual word "Alleluia" but an object that signifies it. What that object would be I am not sure. Maybe they did bury the Alleluia at Our Lady Help of Christians as well. It does seem to be a kind of Latin Mass thing, we are always trying to learn the old traditions. By the way I absolutely love Our Lady Help of Christians. I have written several blog posts about it. Sometimes I go to the grotto there and sketch.
Thank you for commenting!! Let me know if you have any more questions... I can expound for hours LOL. Pax tecum!
Post a Comment