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Passion Sunday or "In Mediana" PDF Print E-mail

Summary of comments of this office by Dom Schuster, in his work L'année liturgique.

Today begins the fortnight of immediate preparation for the Paschal solemnity, which, in the third century, also included the fast of twelve days before Easter morn. In the sacred liturgy, and especially in the breviary, we can still discern the special cycle which forms the sacred time of the Passion. Whereas during Lent - of a slightly later origin - the Church was preoccupied by the instruction of the catechumens and the preparation of public sinners for the solemn reconciliation that took place on Maundy Thursday, during Passiontide, all this is relegated to the background. A single overriding thought informs these two weeks, in the missal as in the breviary, that of the Just One against whom the most impious persecution is being plotted.

During this fortnight when the liturgy evokes in the most dramatic way the hatred of the Sanhedrin, which augments unceasingly against Christ, the ancient Ordines Romani prescribe the suppression of the final doxology after the psalmody, both antiphonal and responsorial.

In the Introït, drawn from Psalm 42, Christ, against the sentence of death plotted by his enemies, a prevaricating race full of fraud, calls upon the Father to make them render account for it on the day of His resurrection.


The Gradual is taken from Psalms 142 and 17. It is the Lord who, approaching the day of trial, takes fright and beseeches the Father to deliver him from the triumph of the impious.


The psalm In directum or Tract (Ps. 128) takes inspiration from the same line of thought, but it describes with greater precision the details of the Lord's Passion.


The verse of the Offertory comes from Psalm 118, which expresses the desire and the delight of the just in following the way of God's commandments, even in the face of the threats of his adversaries.


The versicle for the Communion, contrary to the rule, is drawn neither from a psalm nor the Gospel reading of the day. It is borrowed, with a few slight changes, from St. Paul (I Cor. 2:24-26), and it expresses very well how the Eucharistic sacrifice commemorates the passion of the Lord, the remembrance of which begins today.

 

 
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