RKIA explains the Mass -- part 3

Smells and Bells and Funny hats and much, much more!

Before we explain all those fascinating hats, just a little more about the vestments. You may have noticed that they come in different colors. This goes back to the Jerusalem Temple. The Bible is very clear about the way the priests of the Temple dressed. The Bible says, “…you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother (the first high priest), for dignity and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2). The priest’s clothes are described in Exodus 28, Exodus 39 and Leviticus 8. The high priest wore eight sacred vestments.

1. Priestly undergarments “to cover their nakedness” Good idea. (Exodus 28:42) We wear street clothes under our vestment, but we do wear an amice mentioned above.
2. Priestly tunic from the neck to the feet, with sleeves reaching to the wrists. (Exodus 28:39 and Exodus 28:40), just like our white alb.
3. Priestly belt embroidered with blue, purple and scarlet (Exodus 28:39, 39:29) for the high priest plain white for the regular priest, just like the cincture we wear.
4. The turban. The High Priest wore a broad, flat-topped turban. The ordinary priests wore cone-shaped turban. The modern bishop wears a miter. (More on this later)
5. The High Priest wore two ephods, a sleeveless robe with blue, purple, and scarlet, 
6. and another over it, a sort of vest. 
7. A breastplate with twelve gems, each one carved with the name of one of the tribes of Israel, and finally 
8. A golden plate fastened to the miter with an inscription, “Holiness unto the Lord.”

Essentially a Catholic bishop is wearing the same sort of garments — amice, tunic belt, miter, dalmatic and chasuble — no breastplate with gems and no gold plate, but the miter does have two small stoles attached to it as signs of office. The reason I mention all this stuff is to point out that it comes from the same instinct to worship the Lord in “holy attire.” 

We even have a special color scheme though it is not quite the same as the high priest’s. We wear green for the ordinary times, white or gold for feast days, red for the feasts of martyrs or of the Holy Spirit and purple for the penitential seasons of Lent and Advent. In addition rose vestments can be worn for the fourth Sunday of Lent and the third Sunday of Advent to remind us that the feast is coming and the penance will be over. Black is now rarely worn but may still be worn for the feast of All Souls Day. You can tell where we are in the liturgical year by the color the priest is wearing. Catholics are always either feasting or fasting, just like our Jewish neighbors. We get the concept of the religious calendar from the worship of ancient Israel. Every year is marked with feasts and fasts to remind us that we are journeying through time just as Israel journeyed in the desert. The celebrations of the liturgical year and the feasts of the saints are signposts on the way to heaven.

Now just for the fun of it. The Hats! Why do we wear all those strange hats? Have you ever been in a gothic cathedral in Europe during winter, or summer for that matter? It’s cold — sometimes very cold. The first and most probable reason that hats are worn for religious rituals is to keep the head warm. I have also heard the theory that God, looking down from heaven, finds it easier to tell who is who by the hats. This is ridiculous. I don’t even know why I mention it. You and I, however, can get an idea of who is who by the hats. We already know about the pointy hat that a bishop wears. It is an adaptation of the miter worn by the high priest in the Temple. 

There is also a kind of crown that was worn only by the pope that is not used these days, but you will see it represented in art, on the papal flag, the papal seal and in architecture. It is called the Papal Tiara. It was used in former times for a papal coronation. It is a single pointed version of the miter and around it are three crowns or bands. These mean that the bishop of Rome has authority over the three locations of the church: heaven, earth and purgatory.

Under the miter a bishop wears what is called a zucchetto. I am not making this up. Zucchetto means “a little pumpkin” referring to the head of the wearer. It resembles a Jewish kippah or yarmulka (skull cap). The pope's zucchetto is white. A cardinal’s is red, a bishop’s is violet. Priests and deacons may wear a black zucchetto, though almost no one ever does anymore outside the Vatican. Franciscans frequently wear a brown zucchetto. The zucchetto is never worn with modern clothes, only with vestments or the cassock, the long black tunic worn by priests, (again, red for cardinals and violet for bishops and white for the pope.) 

There is another hat worn by priests, that is pretty rare now. It is called the biretta, not to be confused with the small pistol of similar name, nor with the Italian word for a quick beer. It is an academic hat, just as the mortar board hat worn for graduations. It was worn in the middle ages by judges and the clergy and as such the priest wore it in confession and processions, taking it off at the beginning of Mass.

All the hats are doffed in the presence of someone of higher rank and in the Mass all the zucchettos, miters, tiaras and everything comes off for the part of the Mass when the Lord is present in the form of bread and wine.

Why do all this? Isn’t it a bit pompous? Maybe. But it is also a bit humble. We all used to get dressed up for special occasions. Now people wear flip- flops and cut-offs to their grandmother’s funeral, because the most important thing is that I, ME, MOI, should be comfortable. Who cares what my flip-flops and gym clothes say about my respect or lack of respect for those around me. After all no one is so important that I should be uncomfortable just to impress them. Keep thinking that and one day the Judge of all will ask you. “Where is your wedding garment for the great feast of heaven?” (Matthew 22:12) And you will say, “Lord, I thought flip flops and gym shorts would do.” We wear these things for the Lord, that He should be worshiped in the beauty of holiness. They remind us that we belong, not to the present age, but to a world that has always been and is yet to come. 

These things take us back to the Temple. In fact most of our liturgical customs remind us of the Temple. The bread, the wine, the oil, the palms, the holy water, the incense, even the bells take us back to the Temple. The high priest wore little bells on the hem of his garments when he entered the most holy precincts. We still use bells when we enter into the most holy parts of the Mass. Our traditional chants probably came from the style in which the ancient psalms were sung in the Temple in Jerusalem. All of these things remind us that we have the renewed, rebuilt Temple of which we are living stones. 

When the Temple of Herod was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, the Pharisees salvaged the moral and ethical content of the Torah but they no longer had a Temple. Those members of Israel who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah found a new Temple, the Church and we still offer sacrifice as we have done for four thousand years. The smells and bells and funny hats and all the other obscure and interesting things that inhabit Catholic worship are all about the symbolism of the Temple. They exist to remind us that this is not just about the everyday world. It is about eternity. It is the constant reminder that the Lord is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow! 

Next week: Church architecture. The houses of God, the foretaste of heaven or spaceships from Planet Ugly?

RKIA Explains the Mass -- part 2

Episode 2: Why do they wear all those strange clothes at Mass?

Short answer: they have to wear something. Long answer: the clothes, or as they are usually called, vestments, come from the long history of the Church. They are a visible sign of unity with all those who have gone before us and all those who will come after us. They are full of rich symbolism. Why not wear modern clothes instead of weird ancient clothes? For one reason, today’s modern clothes will become weird old-fashioned clothes in about ten years. For a second reason, it is a reminder that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

Before the changes in the Mass in the 1960’s, the things that priests wore at Mass were all very strictly defined. Now, in the Latin Rite of the Church, some are required, some are optional and a lot of priests leave out even the ones that aren’t optional. In the Eastern rites of the Church, the vestments are still governed by very strict rules.  

A priest is supposed to begin with the washing of the hands, a custom that goes back to the Israelites in the temple and that the Jews still practice. As he washes his hands he says “Give virtue to my hands, O Lord, that being cleansed from all stain I might serve you with purity of mind and body.”

The first thing a priest puts on is called an amice. Not many priests wear it anymore, but it is not optional. Its purpose is to cover the modern collar and clothing a priest or deacon wears. When we say Mass, we are symbolically entering a different space and time, so we cover our regular clothes. Also, the amice keeps the alb and chasuble clean. We more enthusiastic preachers can get a little bit sweaty in the course of a hell fire and brimstone sermon. The amice protects the vestments. The amice is a large square of cloth with strings at two of the corners that tie the amice in place. The priest kisses it, places it over his head and then on his shoulders while he says a prayer, “Place upon me, O Lord, the helmet of salvation, that I may overcome the assaults of the devil.” The amice symbolizes the helmet of salvation (Ephesians 6:17). When the priest and the deacon go to the altar they are going to war with the forces of darkness. The amice reminds them of that.

Second, over this he puts on a long white robe, called an alb (Latin for, you guessed it, “white robe”). It was standard wear at the time of Christ and was the common outfit of the ancient world, a long tunic with loose sleeves. Jews often wear a similar alb at certain services.  It’s supposed to be worn only by the priests and deacons. It is white in order to symbolize the white robe that all of us received at baptism. It is a symbol of sanctifying grace and the purity of heart that the Christian strives for. According to the book of Revelation 7:14, the saints wear long white robes that were made white in the blood of the Lamb. The priest or deacon says a prayer while putting on the white robe. (Make me white, O Lord, and cleanse my heart; that being made white in the Blood of the Lamb I may deserve an eternal reward).

Third, a priest puts on an ancient Roman belt, which is nothing more than a rope. It’s called a cincture. The knot with which it is traditionally tied can be seen on ancient Roman statues. It represents self control, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22). A prayer from the first Letter of Peter (1:13) is said when a priest puts on the cincture (Gird me, O Lord, with the cincture of purity, and quench in my heart the fire of concupiscence, that the virtue of continence and chastity may abide in me). Good prayer. Good reminder.

Fourth and next is something called a maniple. It is not used much anymore, but it has a beautiful symbolism. It is thought to have derived from an ancient style of kerchief that the Romans wore on their left arm. It was used to wipe away tears or sweat and came to be a symbol of the pastoral work of the priesthood. I have also heard that it represented the ropes that are sometimes shown that bound the Lord to the cross in addition to the nails that sometimes sees in old pictures of the crucifixion. The maniple symbolizes that the priest is bound to Christ at Mass, just as Christ was bound. When a priest went to the pulpit to preach, he took off the maniple and left it on the altar. In the Mass the priest represents Christ. He takes off the maniple to show that the Mass is Christ. The sermon is the priest. Perhaps it would be a good thing to bring back a more common use of the maniple to remind us clergy that we are not individually infallible. The prayer said while putting on the maniple is “May I deserve, O Lord, to bear the maniple of weeping and sorrow in order that I may joyfully reap the reward of my labors.”

Then fifth, the priest and the deacon put on a stole over the amice alb and cincture while saying a prayer (Lord, restore the stole of immortality, which I lost through the collusion of our first parents, and, unworthy as I am to approach Thy sacred mysteries, may I yet gain eternal joy). The stole probably comes from scarf or sash of office worn by ancient Roman official. It was kind of ancient Roman sergeant stripes. It also may have ties to the ancient Israelite prayer shawl and the towel that Jesus wore to wash the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper. The priest wears it one way and the deacon another way to symbolize their different roles in the Church and the Liturgy. The priest stands in for Christ which is why his stole is thought to represent the towel with which Christ washed the disciples’ feet. The congregation is the Bride, the Body of Christ symbolically clothed in the white robe of baptism, and the deacon? Very interestingly, in the Eastern Church the deacon’s stole is worn outside his topmost garment, the dalmatic. It is rearranged just before Holy Communion to represent the wings of the angels, so at Mass you have the Lord, the Bride and the Angels represented by the priest the deacon and the congregation.

Sixth, over all this the deacon and the priest wear an outer garment in the Latin Church. The priest wears a chasuble; from the Latin word “casula” the word means the little house. It is in fact an ancient Roman overcoat. Originally it was a semicircular piece of cloth sewn up the front which reaches down almost to the feet on all sides. It makes it really hard to lift the arms or even to move. That’s part of the symbolism. Love covers a multitude. (1Peter4:8.) It represents the sacrificial love that a pastor should have for his flock. Over the years the sides have been trimmed back for the Latin Church and the front has been trimmed off for the Eastern Church. The priest or bishop says this prayer when putting on the chasuble: “O Lord, who has said, ‘My yoke is sweet and My burden light,’ grant that I may so carry it as to merit Thy grace.”

The deacon wears a dalmatic, which is fascinating garment. It is a tunic with wide sleeves. I was always taught that it freed up the arms so the deacon could lift things and so was symbolic of the deacon role of service, having sleeves already “rolled up for work”. There is more to it than that. The dalmatic was an upper class garment. The emperor wore one. The first to wear it were probably not deacons, but bishops, and bishops still wear a dalmatic for certain occasions. They wear it under the chasuble. This is an important symbol. The priest wears a chasuble, the garment of pastoral love; the deacon wears the dalmatic, the garment of pastoral service.

Everyone thinks of the Church as a kind of military chain of command. It isn’t. The Church is meant to be a family. The deacon doesn’t answer to the priest who in turn answers to the bishop. The deacon is the assistant to the bishop in his ministry of service and the priest is the assistant to the bishop in his ministry of sacrificial love. The bishop is thus the head deacon and, at the same time, the head elder (presbyter and priest mean the same thing.)  The dalmatic ties the ministry of the deacon to the bishop whose servant ministry is like that of the angels. Both the bishop and the deacon say this prayer when putting on the dalmatic “Lord, endow me with the garment of salvation, the vestment of joy, and with the dalmatic of justice ever encompass me.”

All this is going on just in getting ready for Mass. So why do we do it? Lots of reasons. For one thing the Bible tells us to, “Worship the Lord in holy attire.” (Psalm 96:2) This is also translated as “Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.” When we go to Mass, we leave time and space. The clothes the minister wears are not just a good show. They remind us that we are in a time that was long ago and a time that is yet to come. We are eternal.

But the hats? What about the hats?

Next week: Smells and Bells and Funny hats!

Who's in charge when there is no pope?

Dear Rev. Know-it-all,

Who will be in charge of the church when Pope Benedict steps down? And why would they name important bishops after a red bird? And why do bishops wear Jewish Yarmulkas?

Yours truly,

Sue Quetta

Dear Sue,

Your last question first. The little hat is called a zucchetta, an Italian word that means a little squash, etymologically related to zucchini. Use your imagination. It looks like a little hollowed out gourd. I’m not making any of this up. There is one theory about religious head gear in general. The theory holds that God, looking down from heaven, uses religious head gear to tell who’s who. "Oh, that fellow with the turban, he’s a swami. That’s a Lubavitcher Hasid and that one’s a Sattmer Hasid. And over there, the fellow with the electric red-purple gourd like thing on his head, that’s a bishop!" This theory is ridiculous, pay no attention to it, but the different head gear does help us to know who the players are, even without a score card. The truth is that zucchettas were  probably worn originally to keep one’s head warm in the cold stone cathedrals of Europe. Priests were formerly tonsured, which means that as a mark of the renunciation of worldly fashions, they would have a clump of hair shaved off the top of their heads leaving a bald spot right on the top. This needed covering because the human body loses the most heat from the head. It has always been well known that the clergy need to maintain warm brains, especially bishops. Thus the zucchetta.

Priests used to wear black zuchettas, but this is no longer the custom. We lower clergy have no real need to keep our brains warm, just so we remember where the keys to the hall and the broom closet are kept, but bishops still wear the zucchetta, white for the pope, red for the cardinals and fuscia for bishops. (Fuscia, pronounced few-shuh, as mentioned, is a color somewhere between red and purple.)  You may well ask when and how these colors were chosen, and why, to which I wold respond, “I have absolutely no idea.” My guess would be, sometime in the middle ages. And why those particular colors for those particular ministries, I would respond why not? The pope wears white since the times of Pope Pius V, (1566-1572) He continued to wear his white Dominican habit instead of the red that popes usually wore. The Cardinals wear crimson red to represent the blood of the martyrs. And bishops wear purple because of their position of leadership in the Church. In the Roman and Byzantine empires, purple was limited by law so they also wear the black in their everyday clothing, as priests do, to symbolize poverty and renunciation of worldly fashions. At least those are the usual reasons given for the colors.

Perhaps the real reason is because they are really neat colors. Some may say that the bishops shouldn’t wear anything distinctive, because they are just humble servants. These critics haven’t read much Bible apparently. The high priests of the Bible wore colors so flashy that they would even embarrass a dentist on a golf course. God seems to like color. The birds and the flowers are not beige. Even beetles, of which God seems inordinately fond, have iridescent colors. As far as I can tell the only place that iridescent fuscia matching a bishops beany appears in nature is on certain flowers and certain insects. 

The Great and Blessed John Paul wore brown shoes made by a humble shoemaker. The press was entranced. Pope Benedict wore red shoes. The press went ballistic. It was rumored that he was wearing designer red shoes made by Gucci. This was not true. His shoes were also made by a humble shoemaker to whom, when he was plain old Joseph Ratzinger, he had gone for years to have his shoes repaired. 

But why red?  Red shoes were the papal custom for centuries, hearkening back to the day of the pre-Christian Roman high priests who wore red shoes. When Christianity was made the state religion of Rome, and the emperors abandoned the city to its fate, only the pope was left to keep order. He donned the shoes and the title that had belonged to the old Pontifex Maximus (Latin for “the supreme bridge builder”) who had been the head of the state religion. It was meant to provide orderly transition for the old religion, but it was also a statement that “the kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.” (Rev.12:10) The blood of the martyrs had overthrown Rome and its government religion that had tried to wipe Christianity from the face of the earth. The red shoes of the pope are a reminder that the blood of the martyrs has triumphed! But the press which is as deep as a puddle and as smart as a gaggle of fashion models decided that brown was better than red. I call these people the beige people. Religion should be beige not passionate fuscia or crimson. God, with his love of birds and beetles and meadows in spring is certainly not beige. If anything God is a love of bling and baroque.

The Catholic Church has gone through many periods of art and architecture.  The Romanesque, the Gothic, the Renaissance, the Baroque when too much was not enough. The Rococo, enough already, and then the Neo-Gothic and the Neo-everything until the 1960's which initiated the beige period of Catholic art. Gray vestments were all the rage. The banners were burlap, the altars were made out of lumpy stone that reminded people of Neanderthal living room sofas. This is the era which gave us some of the most awful architecture known to history. To shock was  more chic than to enlighten and uplift. Failure to love the emperor's new clothing and ugly architecture indicated that one was less than sophisticated. 

Churches looked liked spaces ships from the planet Ugly, and religious art looked like an explosion in a hardware store. This was the era that gave us such prize winning abstractions as the Los Angeles Cathedral that looks (to me) like some futuristic detention center. Over its entrance is a hermaphroditic statue of the Blessed Mother that looks more like Susan Powter, the buzz cut weight loss guru of the 1990's. This was the era that brought us the modern basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe which has a conveyor belt in front of the miraculous image of the Blessed Mother, so that no one spends too much time in front of an image of near divine beauty and subtlety. 

We are finally waking up from the beige era of Catholicism and none too soon, so if you don’t like that splendor of the Catholic liturgy and the beautiful cathedrals that are meant to be the palaces of the poor, then I’m sure you can find some politically correct beige religion that doesn’t get too excited about anything. By the way, the bird was named for the Catholic Cardinals, and not the other way around. 

Who will be in charge until the next pope is elected? The College of Cardinals will be and they will be called to order by dean of the college, currently Cardinal Angelo Sodano. College in this context does not mean an educational institution. It comes from a Latin word meaning “a bunch of guys who we got together to do this particular job.” The College of Cardinals advises the pope  when he calls them together in a consistory (another fancy-schmanzy Latin word meaning a “get together.”) The college also meets when the pope dies, or resigns, for a conclave that elects the next bishop of Rome, i.e. the pope. (Conclave is another Latin word that means “lock down,” literally “with a key.”) 

The College of Cardinals does not have full papal authority during the sede vacante period. More Latin. “Sede vacante” means an empty chair, the chair being the chair of Peter. This is not to be confused with the term “empty suit.” It is said that ancient Rabbis traveled with a special chair in which they sat when teaching. It is the teaching authority that is vacant so the authority of the college is a practical authority. Neither the college nor a Church council ever have the teaching authority of the pope. They assist the papal authority. They never replace it.

Now we know the important answer to the pressing theological question “Why do Cardinals wear red beanies?”  But you may ask, “What is a Cardinal anyway? Is he a Super-Bishop?” No, dear reader, all bishops are super-bishops. A cardinal is something quite special, but that answer will have to wait for next week