First Sunday In
Advent
The whole world
is in expectation of its Redeemer; come, dear Jesus, show Thyself to it by
granting it salvation. The Church, Thy bride, is now commencing another year,
and her first word is to Thee, a word which she speaks in the anxious
solicitude of a mother for the safety of her children; she cries out to Thee,
saying: ‘Come!’ No, we will go no farther in our journey through the desert of
this life without Thee, 0 Jesus! Time is passing quickly away from us; our day
is perhaps far spent, and the shades of our life’s night are fast coming on;
arise, 0 divine Sun of justice. Come! guide our steps and save us from eternal
death.
Dom Gueranger – The Liturgical Year
Advent
Advent, from the
Latin word adventus meaning “coming.” A time of expectant waiting and
preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. It is
the beginning of the Western liturgical year and commences on Advent Sunday,
called Levavi.
Advent is a
period beginning with the Sunday nearest to the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle
(30 November) and embracing four Sundays. The first Sunday may be as early as
27 November, and then Advent has twenty-eight days, or as late as 3 December,
giving the season only twenty-one days.
During this time
the faithful are admonished to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate the
anniversary of the Lord’s coming into the world as the incarnate God of love,
thus to make their souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy
Communion and through grace, and thereby to make themselves ready for His final
coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world.
SYMBOLISM
To attain this
object the Church has arranged the Liturgy for this season. In the official
prayer, the Breviary, she calls upon her ministers, in the Invitatory for
Matins, to adore “the Lord the King that is to come”, “the Lord already near”,
“Him Whose glory will be seen on the morrow”. As Lessons for the first Nocturn
she prescribes chapters from the prophet Isaias, who speaks in scathing terms
of the ingratitude of the house of Israel, the chosen children who had forsaken
and forgotten their Father; who tells of the Man of Sorrows stricken for the
sins of His people; who describes accurately the passion and death of the
coming Saviour and His final glory; who announces the gathering of the Gentiles
to the Holy Hill. In the second Nocturn the Lessons on three Sundays are taken
from the eighth homily of Pope St. Leo (440-461) on fasting and almsdeeds as a preparation
for the advent of the Lord, and on one Sunday (the second) from St. Jerome’s
commentary on Isaias 11:1, which text he interprets of the Blessed Virgin Mary
as “the rod out of the root of Jesse”. In the hymns of the season we find
praise for the coming of Christ, the Creator of the universe, as Redeemer,
combined with prayer to the coming judge of the world to protect us from the
enemy. Similar ideas are expressed in the antiphons for the Magnificat on the
last seven days before the Vigil of the Nativity. In them, the Church calls on
the Divine Wisdom to teach us the way of prudence; on the Key of David to free
us from bondage; on the Rising Sun to illuminate us sitting in darkness and the
shadow of death, etc. In the Masses the intention of the Church is shown in the
choice of the Epistles and Gospels. In the Epistle she exhorts the faithful
that, since the Redeemer is nearer, they should cast aside the works of
darkness and put on the armour of light; should walk honestly, as in the day,
and put on the Lord Jesus Christ; she shows that the nations are called to
praise the name of the Lord; she asks them to rejoice in the nearness of the
Lord, so that the price of God, which surpasses all understanding, may keep
their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus; she admonishes them not to pass
judgment, for the Lord, when He comes, will manifest the secrets hidden in
hearts. In the Gospels the Church speaks of the Lord coming in glory; of Him
in, and through, Whom the prophecies are being fulfilled; of the Eternal
walking in the midst of the Jews; of the voice in the desert, “Prepare ye the
way of the Lord”. The Church in her Liturgy takes us in spirit back to the time
before the incarnation of the Son of God, as though it were really yet to take
place. Cardinal Wiseman says:
We are not dryly
exhorted to profit by that blessed event, but we are daily made to sigh with
the Fathers of old, “Send down the dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the
clouds rain the Just One: let the earth be opened, and bud forth the Redeemer.”
HISTORICAL
ORIGIN
It cannot be
determined with any degree of certainty when the celebration of Advent was
first introduced into the Church. The preparation for the feast of the Nativity
of Our Lord was not held before the feast itself existed, and of this we find
no evidence before the end of the fourth century, when, according to Duchesne
[Christian Worship (London, 1904), 260], it was celebrated throughout the whole
Church, by some on 25 December, by others on 6 January. Of such a preparation we
read in the Acts of a synod held at Saragossa in 380, whose fourth canon
prescribes that from the seventeenth of December to the feast of the Epiphany
no one should be permitted to absent himself from church. We have two homilies
of St. Maximus, Bishop of Turin (415-466), entitled “In Adventu Domini”, but he
makes no reference to a special time. The title may be the addition of a
copyist. There are some homilies extant, most likely of St. Caesarius, Bishop
of Arles (502-542), in which we find mention of a preparation before the
birthday of Christ; still, to judge from the context, no general law on the
matter seems then to have been in existence. A synod held (581) at Mâcon, in
Gaul, by its ninth canon orders that from the eleventh of November to the Nativity
the Sacrifice be offered according to the Lenten rite on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday of the week. The Gelasian Sacramentary notes five Sundays for the
season; these five were reduced to four by Pope St. Gregory VII (1073-85). The
collection of homilies of St. Gregory the Great (590-604) begins with a sermon
for the second Sunday of Advent. In 650 Advent was celebrated in Spain with
five Sundays. Several synods had made laws about fasting to be observed during
this time, some beginning with the eleventh of November, others the fifteenth,
and others as early as the autumnal equinox. Other synods forbade the
celebration of matrimony. In the Greek Church we find no documents for the
observance of Advent earlier than the eighth century. St. Theodore the Studite
(d. 826), who speaks of the feasts and fasts commonly celebrated by the Greeks,
makes no mention of this season. In the eighth century we find it observed not
as a liturgical celebration, but as a time of fast and abstinence, from 15
November to the Nativity, which, according to Goar, was later reduced to seven
days. But a council of the Ruthenians (1720) ordered the fast according to the
old rule from the fifteenth of November. This is the rule with at least some of
the Greeks. Similarly, the Ambrosian and the Mozarabic rites have no special
liturgy for Advent, but only the fast.
Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)
FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT – MASS PROPERS
When these
things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads, because your
redemption is at hand.
Ad te levávi
ánimam meam: Deus meus, in te confído, non erubéscam: neque irrídeant me
inimíci mei: étenim univérsi, qui te exspéctant, non confundéntur.
THE MYSTERY OF
ADVENT
In the first
coming,’ says St. Bernard, He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the
second, He comes in spirit and in power; in the third, He comes in glory and in
majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to
the third.’
Commemoration for St. Saturninus, Martyr
St.
Saturninus was one of the "Apostles to the Gauls" sent out (probably
under the direction of Pope Fabian, 236 - 250) during the consulate of Decius
and Gratus (250-251) to Christianize Gaul after the persecutions under Emperor
Decius had all but dissolved the small Christian communities. St Fabian sent
out seven bishops from Rome to Gaul to preach the Gospel: Saint Gatien to
Tours, Saint Trophimus to Arles, Saint Paul to Narbonne, Saint Saturnin to
Toulouse, Saint Denis to Paris, Austromoine to Clermont, and Saint Martial to
Limoges.
THE FIRST
SUNDAY OF ADVENT – MASS PROPERS
1st Class/
Semi-double/Violet Vestments
Missa – ‘Ad te
levavi’
INTROIT Psalm 24. 1-3
Ad te levávi ánimam meam: Deus
meus, in te confído, non erubéscam: neque irrídeant me inimíci mei: étenim
univérsi, qui te exspéctant, non confundéntur.
Psalm 24: 4. Vias tuas, Domine,
demónstra mihi: et sémitas tuas édoce me.
Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto. Sicut erat in
princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculórum. Amen.
Ad te levávi ánimam meam:
Deus meus, in te confído, non erubéscam: neque irrídeant me inimíci mei:
étenim univérsi qui te exspéctant, non confundéntur.
Unto thee, O Lord, have I
lifted up my soul: my God, in thee do I trust, O let me not be
confounded. Neither let mine enemies triumph over me: for all they that
hope in thee shall not be confounded.
Psalm 24: 4. Show me thy
ways, O Lord, and teach me thy paths.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Unto thee, O Lord, have I
lifted up my soul: my God, in thee do I trust, O let me not be
confounded. Neither let mine enemies triumph over me: for all they that
hope in thee shall not be confounded.
COLLECT
Excita, quæsumus, Dómine, poténtiam tuam, et veni: ut ab
imminéntibus peccatórum nostrórum perículis, te mereámur protegénte éripi, te
liberánte salvári: Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo Patre, in unitáte
Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sæcula sæculórum. Amen.
Stir up thy power, O Lord, we beseech thee, and come: that by
Thy protection we may deserve to be rescued from the threatening dangers of our
sins and saved by Thy deliverance. Who livest and reignest with God the Father,
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Second Collect of St.
Saturninus, Martyr
O God, You Who give
us the joy of celebrating the anniversary of the death of blessed Saturninus,
Your Martyr, grant that we may be helped by his merits.
It is right that we should also
beg, during this holy season, the all-powerful mediation of Her who, at first,
was the sole depository of the great secret which was to give life to the
world, with the Priest:
Third
Collect in Honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary
O God, who didst please that thy Word should take flesh at the
message of an Angel in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, grant unto us thy
suppliants, that we, who believe her to be truly the Mother of God, may be
helped by her intercession with thee.
EPISTLE Romans 13. 11-14
Brethren, knowing that it is now the hour for us to rise from
sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is
passed and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness,
and put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day: not in
rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention
and envy: but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.
GRADUAL Psalm 24: 3, 4
Univérsi, qui te exspéctant, non confundéntur, Dómine. Vias
tuas, Dómine, notas fac mihi: et sémitas tuas édoce me.
All they, that wait on Thee,
shall not be confounded, O Lord. Show, O Lord, Thy ways to me: and teach me Thy
paths.
ALLELUIA Psalm 84: 4
Allelúia, allelúia. V. Osténde nobis, Dómine, misericórdiam
tuam: et salutáre tuum da nobis. Allelúia.
Alleluia, alleluia. V. Show us, O Lord, Thy mercy: and grant us
Thy salvation Alleluia.
At
that time Jesus said to His disciples: There shall be signs in the
sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations,
by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves: men
withering away for fear and expectation of what shall come upon the whole
world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved. And then they shall see the Son
of man coming in a cloud with great power and majesty. But when these
things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads, because your
redemption is at hand. And He spoke to them a similitude: See the fig tree and
all the trees: when they now shoot forth their fruit, you know that summer is
nigh. So you also, when you shall see these things come to pass, know that the
kingdom of God is at hand. Amen, I say to you, this generation shall not pass
away till all things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but My
words shall not pass away.
OFFERTORY: Psalm 129: 1-2
To Thee have I lifted up my soul: in Thee, O my God, I put my
trust, let me not be ashamed: neither let my enemies laugh at me: for none of
them that wait for Thee shall be confounded.
SECRET
May these holy Mysteries, O Lord, cleanse us by their powerful
efficacy, and enable us to come with greater purity to Him who is their
foundation. Through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with
thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Second Secret for St.
Saturninus, Martyr
O Lord, make holy the
sacrificial gifts we offer to You, and through the intercession of blessed
Saturninus, Your Martyr, be appeased and look with favor upon us.
Strengthen, we beseech thee, O Lord, in our minds the mysteries
of the true faith: that we who confess him that was conceived of the
Virgin to be very God and very Man, may by the power of his saving
Resurrection, deserve to arrive at eternal gladness.
PREFACE OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY
It is truly meet and just, right and for our salvation, that we
should at all times and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord,
Father almighty, ever-lasting God: Who, together with Thine only-begotten Son,
and the Holy Ghost, are one God, one Lord: not in the oneness of a single
Person, but in the Trinity of one substance. For what we believe by Thy
revelation of Thy glory, the same do we believe of Thy Son, the same of the
Holy Ghost, without difference or separation. So that in confessing the true
and everlasting Godhead, distinction in persons, unity in essence, and equality
in majesty may be adored. Which the Angels and Archangels, the Cherubim also
and Seraphim do praise: who cease not daily to cry out with one voice saying:
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,
Dóminus Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis.
Benedíctus qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis.
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full
of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he that cometh in the
Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
COMMUNION Psalm 84: 13
The Lord will give goodness: and our earth shall yield her
fruit.
POSTCOMMUNION
May we receive of thy mercy, O Lord, in the midst of Thy temple;
that we may with becoming honour prepare for the approaching solemnities of our
redemption. Through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord…
Tomb of St. Saturninus in the Basilica of St. Sernin, Toulouse, France
Tomb of St. Saturninus in the Basilica of St. Sernin, Toulouse, France
Second Postcommunion Prayer for St.
Saturninus, Martyr
May the reception of
Your sacrament, we beseech You, O Lord, make us holy, and by the intercession
of Your saints, make us pleasing to You.
Third
Postcommunion in Honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Pour forth, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy grace into our hearts,
that we to whom the Incarnation of Christ thy Son was made known by the message
of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of the
Resurrection.
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