Servite Order
The Servite
Order is one of the five original Catholic mendicant orders. Its objects are
the sanctification of its members, preaching the Gospel, and the propagation of
devotion to the Mother of God, with special reference to her sorrows. The
members of the Order use O.S.M. (for Ordo Servorum Beatae Mariae Virginis) as
their post-nominal letters. The male members are known as Servite Friars or
Servants of Mary.
The Order of
Servants of Mary (The Servites) is a religious family that embraces a
membership of friars (priests and brothers), contemplative nuns, a congregation
of active sisters and lay groups.
Foundation
The Servites
lead a community life in the tradition of the mendicant orders (such as the
Dominicans and Franciscans). The Servite Order was founded in 1233 AD, when a
group of cloth merchants of Florence, Italy, left their city, families and
professions to retire outside the city on a mountain known as Monte Senario for
a life of poverty and penance. These men are known as the Seven Holy Founders;
they were canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.
These seven
were: Buonfiglio dei Monaldi (Bonfilius), Giovanni di Buonagiunta (Bonajuncta),
Amadeus of the Amidei (Bartolomeus), Ricovero dei Lippi-Ugguccioni (Hugh),
Benedetto dell' Antella (Manettus), Gherardino di Sostegno (Sostene), and
Alessio de' Falconieri (Alexius). They belonged to seven patrician families of
that city. As a reflection of the penitential spirit of the times, it had been
the custom of these men to meet regularly as members of a religious society
established in honor of Mary, the Mother of God.
From the
beginning, the members of the Order dedicated themselves to Mary under her
title of Mother of Sorrows. Dedicating their devotion to the mother of Jesus,
they adopted Mary's virtues of hospitality and compassion as the order's
hallmarks. The distinctive spirit of the order is the sanctification of its
members by meditation on the Passion of Jesus and the Sorrows of Mary, and
spreading abroad this devotion.
The bishop of
Florence approved the Friar Servants of Mary as a religious Order sometime
between the years 1240 and 1247. The Servants decided to live by the Rule of
St. Augustine, and added to the Rule their own expression of Marian devotion
and dedication. By 1250 there were a number of Servants who were ordained to
the priesthood, thus creating an Order with priests as well as brothers.
Pope Alexander
IV, favored a plan for the amalgamation of all institutes following the Rule of
St. Augustine. This was accomplished in March 1256, and about the same time a
Rescript was issued confirming the Order of the Servites as a separate body
with power to elect a general. Four years later a general chapter was convened
at which the order was divided into two provinces, Tuscany and Umbria, the
former of which St. Manettus directed, while the latter was given into the care
of St. Sostene. Within five years two new provinces were added: Romagna and
Lombardy.
St. Philip Benizi
Suppression and expansion
St. Philip
Benizi was elected general on June 5, 1267, and afterwards became the great
propagator of the order. The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 put into execution
the ordinance of the Fourth Lateran Council, forbidding the foundation of new
religious orders, and suppressed all mendicant institutions not yet approved by
the Holy See. In the year 1276 Pope Innocent V in a letter to St. Philip
declared the order suppressed. St. Philip proceeded to Rome, but before his
arrival there Innocent V had died. His successor lived but five weeks. Finally
Pope John XXI, decided that the order should continue as before. It was not
definitively approved until Pope Benedict XI issued the Bull "Dum
levamus" (February 11, 1304). Of the seven founders, St. Alexis alone
lived to see their foundation raised to the dignity of an order. He died in
1310.
Pope Boniface
IX granted the Servites the power to confer theological degrees on January 30,
1398, and the order established the Marianum in Rome.
The new
foundation enjoyed considerable growth in the following decades. Even in the
thirteenth century there were houses of the order in Germany, France, and
Spain. Early in the fourteenth century the order had more than one hundred
convents including branch houses in Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and
Belgium; there were also missions in Crete, the Philippines (St.
Peregrine-Philippine Vicariate) and India.
The
disturbances during the Protestant Reformation caused the loss of many Servite
convents in Germany, but in the south of France the order met with much
success. The Convent of Santa Maria in Via (1563) was the second house of the
order established in Rome; San Marcello al Corso had been founded in 1369.
Early in the eighteenth century the order sustained losses and confiscations
from which it has scarcely yet recovered. The flourishing Province of Narbonne
was almost totally destroyed by the plague which swept Marseilles in 1720. In
1783 the Servites were expelled from Prague and in 1785 Emperor Joseph II
desecrated the shrine of Maria Waldrast. Ten monasteries were suppressed in
Spain in 1835. A new foundation was made at Brussels in 1891.
After the
Risorgimento in 1870, the government of Italy closed the Marianum along with
many other papal institutions. The institute was re-founded as the College of
Sant Alessio Falcioneri in 1895.
At this period
the order was introduced into England and America, chiefly through the efforts
of Fathers Bosio and Morini. The latter, having gone to London in 1864 as
director of the affiliated Sisters of Compassion, obtained charge of a parish
from Archbishop Manning in 1867. His work prospered; besides St. Mary's Priory
at London, convents were opened at Bognor Regis (1882) and Begbroke (1886). In
1870 Fathers Morini, Ventura, Giribaldi, and Brother Joseph Camera, at the
request of Bishop Joseph Melcher of Green Bay, Wisconsin, took up a mission in
America, at Neenah. Father Morini founded at Chicago (1874) the monastery of
Our Lady of Sorrows. A novitiate was opened at Granville, Wisconsin, in 1892. The
American province was formally established in 1908.
Pope Pius XII,
through the Congregation of Seminaries and Universities, elevated the Marianum
to a pontifical theological faculty on 30 November 1950.
After the
Second Vatican Council, the order renewed its Constitutions starting with its
1968 general chapter at Majadahonda, Madrid, a process which was concluded in
1987. In the same year, Prior General Michael M. Sincerny oversaw the creation
of the International Union of the Servite Family (UNIFAS).
February 12
Friday after Ash
Wednesday
The Seven Holy Founders of the Order of Servants
Of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Confessors
Double - White vestments
Missa 'Justi Decantaverunt'
INTROIT - Wisdom 10: 20-21; Psalm 8: 2
Justi
decantaverunt, Domine, nomen sanctum tuum, et victricem manum tuam laudaverunt
pariter: quoniam sapientia aperuit os mutum, et linguas inflantium fecit
disertas. Ps. Domine Dominus noster, quam admirabile est nomen tuum in universa
terra. Gloria Patri.
Justi decantaverunt…
The just sang
to Thy holy name, O Lord, they praised with one accord Thy victorious hand. For
wisdom opened the mouth of the dumb, and made the tongues of infants eloquent.
Ps. O Lord our God, how admirable is Thy name in the whole earth. Glory be to
the Father.
The just sang…
Ceiling in the Servite mother church,
Santissima Annunziata, Florence
COLLECT
O Lord Jesus
Christ Who, in order to renew the memory of the sorrows of Thy most holy
Mother, hast through the seven blessed fathers enriched Thy Church with the new
Order of Servites; mercifully grant that we may be so united in their sorrows
as to share in their joys: Who livest and reignest.
FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY - Feria of
Lent
May Your
kindly favour, we beseech You, O Lord, accompany the fast we have begun, that
we may be able to practice with a pure mind what we perform bodily. Through our
Lord.
EPISTLE - Ecclus. 44: 1-15
Let us now
praise men or renown, and our fathers in their generation. The Lord hath wrought
great glory through His magnificence from the beginning. Such as have borne
rule in their dominions, men of great power and endued with their wisdom,
showing forth in the prophets the dignity of prophets, and ruling over the
present people, and by the strength of wisdom instructing the people in most
holy words. Such as by their skill sought out musical tunes, and published
canticles of the Scriptures. Rich men in virtues, lovers of beautifulness:
living at peace in their houses. All these have gained glory in their
generations, and were praised in their days. They that were born of them have
left a name behind them, that their praises might be related. And there are
some of whom there is no memorial; who are perished, as if they had never been,
and are born as if they had never been born, and their children with them. But
these were men of mercy, whose godly deeds have not failed. Good things
continue with their seed. Their posterity are a holy inheritance, and their
seed hath stood in the covenants. And their children for their sakes remain for
ever; their seed and their glory shall not be forsaken. Their bodies are buried
in peace, and their name liveth unto generation and generation. Let the people
show forth their wisdom, and the Church declare their praise.
GRADUAL - Isaias 65: 23; Ecclus. 44: 14
My elect shall
not labour in vain, nor bring forth in trouble, for they are the seed of the
blessed of the Lord, and their posterity with them. Their bodies are buried in
peace, and their name liveth unto generation and generation.
TRACT - Psalm 125: 5-7
They that sow
in tears shall reap in joy. Going they
went and wept, casting their seeds. But coming they shall come with joyfulness,
carrying their sheaves.
GOSPEL - Matthew 19: 27-29
At that time,
Peter said to Jesus: Behold we have left all things and have followed Thee:
what therefore shall we have? And Jesus said to them: Amen I say to you, that
you, who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on
the seat of His majesty, you also shall sit on twelve seats, judging the twelve
tribes of Israel. And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters,
or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My name's sake, shall
receive an hundredfold and shall possess life everlasting.
OFFERTORY - Isaias 56: 7
I will bring
them into My holy mount, and I will make them joyful in My house of prayer;
their holocausts and their victims shall please Me upon My altar.
SECRET
Lord, the
sacrifice we offer up to Thee, and do Thou grant that, through the prayers of
Thy Saints, being inflamed with love for the sorrowing Virgin, Mother of Thy
Son, we may serve Thee with a free mind. Through the same our Lord.
FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY - Feria of
Lent
Grant, O Lord,
we beseech You, that as we offer the sacrifice of Lent, our hearts may be made
acceptable to You; and the sacrifice may give us greater willingness for self denial.
Through our Lord.
COMMON PREFACE
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, eternal God:
through Christ our Lord. Through Whom the Angels praise Thy Majesty,
Dominations worship, Powers stand in awe. The Heavens and the Heavenly hosts together
with the blessed Seraphim in triumphant chorus unite to celebrate it. Together
with them we entreat Thee, that Thou mayest bid our voices also to be admitted,
while we say in lowly praise…
COMMUNION - John 15: 16
I have chosen
you from the world that you should go and bring forth fruit, and your fruit
should remain.
POSTCOMMUNION
Quickened anew
by the heavenly mysteries, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that following the example
of the saints whose feast we are keeping, we may steadfastly abide at the foot
of the cross of Jesus with Mary His mother, and merit to partake in the fruits
of His redemption. Through the same our Lord.
FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY - Feria of
Lent
Fill us, O
Lord, with the spirit of Your love, to unite in charity those whom You have
filled with one and the same heavenly Bread. Through our Lord.
PRAYER OVER THE PEOPLE
Watch over
Your people, O Lord, and mercifully cleanse them from all their sins; for no
harm can come to them if no evil has power over them. Through our Lord.
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