www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Kyrie Eleison - Latin or Greek

And I thank God this forum can be informative, prayerful and intelligent, and at the same time it can keep a sense of humor and good proportion....

humbly,

Elias

Bless, Father Elias,

Thank you for the compliment!

Those of us who are now off the Forum continue to have discussions about Byzantine Church issues amongst ourselves via private e-mail.

Unfortunately, some of us feel "more secure" in that kind of context. Others, like me, have simply moved on to another religious chat forum to begin anew there . . .

But please do stop referring to me and provoking me to post when I shouldn't be .

Kissing your right hand, holy Father in Carmel, I again implore your blessing and forgiveness,

Alex

My Ukie brother Alex,

Glad to see your "BooBoo" is getting better, resurfacing is'nt that bad is it ?

james

Dear Gaudior,

I can't wait to hear about the results of your weekend excursion into baking.

Thank you for your kind words about my posting earlier in the thread.

Steve

Dear Jakub,

Yes, but I fear that all this talk about food and cake recipes will make me want to eat more and so cause me ribs to expand out, making healing more difficult . . .

But I accept this for what it is - a punishment from God . . .

Alex

Returning to the original topic of the thread.........

I wasn't able to get both volumes of Fr. Jungmann's Mass of the Roman Rite on Amazon (I am sure it's in my local first-rate Catholic bookstore, but I haven't been able to get there), but I was able to get what was apparently his final work, The Mass(1976). It combines an overview of the Mass' history, some pastoral thoughts, a summary of his earlier research, and then an explanation of the 1970 Roman Missal into a book written for the interested layman. I actually like it better than the previous work because the previous work gets VERY detailed and is really "too much" for your average reader (though again it should satisfy anyone short of an academic liturgical historian).

As for the Kyrie, he states that an Eastern-style, deacon-recited litany was acknowledged as common in the West by the 529 Synod of Vaison, and that it probably was in use at the time of Pope Gelasius (492-6), noting such a litany in the "Prayer of Gelasius". In the late 600s the first Roman Ordo (presumably equivalent to the current Roman Missal of 1970) instructed the deacon to continue litanizing in this manner until the Pope told him to stop.

However, by the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great, there was an alternative custom of repeating Kyrie eleison and Christe eleison, which was soon fixed at 3 Kyrie, 3 Christe, 3 Kyrie, which is the rite found in the 1962 Roman missal (the so-called "Latin Mass" or "Mass of Pius V"). I suppose they thought this was preferable to the litany , probably because of the length of the litany and the perceived sufficiency of the 3-3-3 formula.

This was the way things were until the 1969 missal (which some call the "Novus Ordo" or "New Mass"). My interpretation of his comments on the new rite is that an effective return to the Eastern-style litany is acceptable to Roman tradition and is permitted under the 1970 GIRM (par. 30)

The 1970 GIRM does indeed seem to permit this, and I don't see anything in the 2002 GIRM (par. 52) that would forbid this. This would need to be authorized by the local Bishop, and I believe that such a thing is not permitted in the US.

LV, who is sure that his Intrigued brother(sister?) never would have guessed that the thread would go this far!