Celebrating the Mother of God

A prayer recited at Compline or the Night Prayer of the Divine Office is:

We fly to your patronage,
O Holy Mother of God;
Despise not our petitions in our necessities,
But deliver us always from all dangers,
O glorious and blessed Virgin

In 1917 an ancient, Egyptian text was discovered using this prayer. This was a surprise as many didn't realize how old the prayer was. Because the prayer uses the term "Mother of God" it was assumed that it could be from just after 431 because that's when the Council of Ephesus declared that Mary was the Mother of God or Theotokos. But scientific tests showed the papyrus dated form no later than the 3rd century. Further research showed that Alexandrian Christians were already calling Mary the Mother of God in the third century.

This is an example of how the people of God experienced Mary and grew from her before the Church officially recognized that dogma. The same was true with calling Mary the Immaculate Conception, which was a widespread practice before the Church officially recognized the term. As a Church we grow through our experiences.

Masses as we celebrate this holy day are:

Wednesday

5:30

  

Thursday

7:30, 9:00, 10:30 & noon

Celebrating Mary as Mother of God

A prayer recited at Compline or the Night Prayer of the Divine Office is:

We fly to your patronage,
O Holy Mother of God;
Despise not our petitions in our necessities,
But deliver us always from all dangers,
O glorious and blessed Virgin

In 1917 an ancient, Egyptian text was discovered using this prayer. This was a surprise as many didn't realize how old the prayer was. Because the prayer uses the term "Mother of God" it was assumed that it could be from just after 431 because that's when the Council of Ephesus declared that Mary was the Mother of God or Theotokos. But scientific tests showed the papyrus dated form no later than the 3rd century. Further research showed that Alexandrian Christians were already calling Mary the Mother of God in the third century.

This is an example of how the people of God experienced Mary and grew from her before the Church officially recognized that dogma. The same was true with calling Mary the Immaculate Conception, which was a widespread practice before the Church officially recognized the term. As a Church we grow through our experiences.

Masses as we celebrate this holy day are:

Wednesday

5:30 and 11:00 p.m.

  

Thursday

7:30, 9:00, 10:30 & noon

Inspired by St. John the Baptist

Michael York as John the Baptist

In the 8th century a deacon named Paolo, upon having to sing the exultet on the Easter vigil, found himself hoarse. He prayed to St. John the Baptist and his voice recovered. Thus he wrote a special hymn for St. John the Baptist

This hymn was so widely enjoyed that it was added to the Divine Office as the antiphon for the psalms of the day celebrating the birth of St. John, which is still celebrated as a solemnity on June 24th. The hymn, because of its length, was divided to make up the antiphons for the Evening Prayer on the night before, the vigil prayer during the night and then the Morning Prayer the day of the solemnity. The Latin of the Evening Prayer, i.e. the beginning of the hymn, reads:

Ut queant laxis resonare fibris mira gestorum famuli tuorum, solve polluti labii reatum, Sancte Iohannes

“So that your servants may, with loosened voices, resound the wonders of your deeds, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O Saint John.”

Now in the early 11th century a monk named Guido d’Arezzo found that the hymn fit perfectly for his desire to find a system of solimization. That is, he could use the syllables from the hymn, known so well at the time, as a way of teaching the basic scale of C. Thus:

UT queant laxis REsonare fibris MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum, SOlve polluti LAbii reatum, Sancte Iohannes

The UT was changed later to DO to remove a syllable that started with an open vowel sound, and was assumed to refer to Domine “Lord,” though the text is actually addressed to St. John. Also, SI was added later from the Sancte Iohannes for the missing note in the scale, but that too was later changed from SI to our now familiar TI. Some suspect this was because of anti-Catholic sentiments.

Thus we have the DO – RE – MI – FA – SO – LA – TI as the simple scale, which is still used as a teaching method in many parts of the world. It should be noted, too, that these come from Gregorian Chant which is the musical tradition that provided humanity with a system for writing music. Few realize that Gregorian Chant is the most influential musical tradition in the history of humanity, regardless if you’re Christian or not. With over a thousand years of use, it was also the longest musical tradition. It is just such a shame that so few Catholics are familiar with it at all or – worse – associate with it a “darkened” age. But don’t get me started on that.

This is a portion from Omar F. A. Gutierrez's March 21, 2011 blog entry

 "What We Can Learn From The Divine Office,

 or Why Culture Matters."

His blog is Regnum Novum.