I was raised Roman Catholic. I remember Passiontide as being full of unusual rituals and services, including the Easter Vigil, which, when followed by midnight Easter mass, seemed like a 4 hour service to me. But it was cool because of all the stuff that we didn’t do any other time of the year, like the Litany of the Saints.
I remember some ritual in which the priest processed around the church, and someone walked behind him, holding an elaborate umbrella over his head. I have no context for the time of year this happened. I’m thinking maybe this was the end of the Easter Vigil, and the priest was processing with the monstrance?
You’re probably thinking of the end of the Maundy Thursday mass, when there’s a procession with the Blessed Sacrament to the Altar of Repose. The Sacrament is generally left on the altar for several hours - indeed, in some churches up until midnight - for private adoration.
I’m 32 years old, and have always attended church faithfully, but I’ve never seen anything that I might describe as an umbrella used in any service. That seems to have been tossed out somewhere along the line (I’d guess Vatican II) along with Latin masses and those funny little hats that priests wear in old pictures.
Is your congregation (or your pastor) Polish? Apparently it’s a Polish tradition called the Rezurekcja to carry the Sacrament in a procession around the church underneath a canopy.
Other than that, I got nothing.
On preview: shakes fist at Cunctator
It’s not just a Polish tradition Kythereia. They were pretty standard throughout the Latin Rite until Vatican II. Our parish, which follows the traditional Latin Rite, uses a canopy on Maundy Thursday and the feast of Corpus Christi for the processions. In fact, yesterday I saw the sacristan getting the canopy out of the cupboard to give it an airing in readiness for Thursday night’s procession.
The parish I grew up in was mixed – Irish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian. And this was in West Virginia.
Cuncator, what I remember was something between the two pictures you linked to. Not as tall and conical as the ombrellino, more structured than the canopy.
The thing I find interesting, though, is that I never heard the term “Maundy Thursday” until I left the Catholic church. It was “Holy Thursday.” I still find “Maundy Thursday” kind of jarring to my ear. Is this a difference between traditional Latin Rite and Vatican II, or US and Australia?
Yes, I’ve seen those too: rounder, umbrella-type things. The ones I’ve seen were yellow, with tassels.
Possibly, although I’ve heard both terms used across the board. In Australia “Holy” would be more common than “Maundy” overall. I like Maundy because it links up with the *Mandatum * ceremony (the washing of the feet) that takes place during the mass on that day.
We use Maundy Thursday in the Anglican Church of Canada. Could it be a Brit-speak term that’s survived in Commonwealth countries, but died out in the U.S.?
Heh, that’s interesting, because over here in Germany, we do processions involving a canopy over the host on Fronleichnam (website is in German but depicts some of the processions). This is celebrated on the second Thursday after Pentecost, and apparently was instituted as a substitution for Maundy (I like that word) Thursday rites, since it was not deemed appropriate to hold processions during a time of mourning (so to speak). The mandatum ceremony is still taking place during mass, though.
In German, the Thursday before Easter is called “Gründonnerstag” (literally “Green Thursday”) by the way. “Grün”, though, is here not actually referring to the color, but is an evolution of “greinen” which means “to cry”.
The Episcopal Church of the USA (American Anglicans) still calls it “Maundy Thursday”, so it may be an Anglican thing, rather than a British thing.
By the way, while feet are washed on Maundy Thursday, the “manducatum” which give Maundy Thursday it’s name doesn’t come from that. It comes from the new commandment (manducatum) which Christ gave: Love your neighbor as yourself.
The second Thursday after Pentecost is the feast of Corpus Christi. As I mentioned in my earlier post, this is another day when processions with the Blessed Sacrament occur and canopies are used.
And the antiphon Mandatum novum do vobis (“a new commandment I give unto you”) is sung at mass while the men’s feet are being washed - thus giving the name Maundy Thursday.
