Bulletins

July 24, 2016

Download the Bulletin as a PDF

More from the Reverend Josef A. Jungmann, S.J. about variations on the Kiss of Peace, who below refers to something that still is sometimes used in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, namely a paxbrede, a full description of which you can find online:

New Liturgical Movement: http://bit.ly/DominicanPaxbrede
Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/WikiPaxbrede

which Father Jungmann calls the instrumentum pacis or “instrument of peace”.

According to the statutes of a convent of Cistercian nuns in Lower Germany the Kiss of Peace was given before Communion on Communion days starting with the abbess, according to which the server if he or someone else wishes to receive Communion, hands the priest the instrumentum pacis, then kisses it himself and passes it on…. According to [other sources] the Cistercians in Germany at the time gave the Pax only at High Mass, whereas the secular clergy imparted it to the server by means of the crucifix also at private Mass. The Pax for the frater servitor (or “brother server”) also without Communion was firmly retained in private Mass by the Dominicans. Elsewhere the kiss of peace gradually became a sort of substitute for Communion. Not only was the kiss exchanged at the altar, but all the people participated.

The ancient way of exchanging the kiss of peace would not entail the disturbance and confusion in the service that we would be led to expect today, for then the kiss was not continued from person to person, but merely exchanged between neighbors.

The first Roman ordo says explicitly: When the Pax Domini has been spoken, the archdeacon gives the kiss of peace to the first bishop… At the given signal, therefore, those in the nave of the church greeted each other with the kiss. But many of the later manuscripts of this ordo have introduced an inconspicuous but very important change: deinde ceteris per ordinem et populis. Thus the kiss of peace is made to proceed from the altar and, like a message or even like a gift which comes from the Sacrament, is handed on “to the others and to the people”.

(The Mass of the Roman Rite, pp. 325-326)

May the peace of the Lord be with you always!

 

Fr. Christopher J. Pollard

P.S. If my truck ever gets out of the garage I will be many miles away by the time you read this and will be so for the rest of July.