Our Lady of Walsingham
  • Aaron
    Posts: 110
    I have been asked to plan music for Vespers on the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, Sept 24. Where might I find the appropriate antiphons and psalms? Should I use from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
  • There are no Office propers for this feast in any EF or OF chant sources I know (including old and modern Sarum books). I believe there are psalms and readings specified in the published customary of the (British) Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, but this would be for Anglican-style Evensong, not vespers. In short, the Common is the only option I've ever seen.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    I have had a look around my books... (I live in England)

    I also note that there appear to be no Propers for this Feast in the English supplements, and I have looked in a few 1860 - 1962.
    All refer back to the Propers for the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom (AKA Our Lady of Mercy) While the Roman is mostly Common, there is a Proper for the Mercedarians.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Blessed_Virgin_Mary_of_Mercy

    They do have a Proper Office with Hymns, and their Mass Propers include a sequence.
    I will post more on this Office later.
    N.B. Have just remembered I need to look in another set of books that have interesting supplements...
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • The feast of Our lady of Ransom was originally for Spain and such where ransoming people from the Saracens was the religious work of some orders. It was extended to England after the unfortunate contretemps over a certain divorce. as a prayer for the return of Our lady's Dowry to the fold, or so I have be given to understand.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen JulieColl
  • Aaron
    Posts: 110
    Ok, next question. Where might I find an accompanied setting of the antiphons in English from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    Have you talked to Jackson? He is usually a veritable library of resources on such things.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    Happy Feast,

    Below link has the 3 Hymns from the Divine Office for Our Lady of Mercy / Ransom for today, and a link to the Proper including Sequence. For those outside the USA who will not be able to download the scan, I can arrange to send it.

    http://societyofstbede.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/our-lady-of-ransom/
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Aaron
    Posts: 110
    This year we will be having Mass. This ranks as a Solemnity for us, are there specific readings?
  • davido
    Posts: 944
    The Pius X Hymnal (edited by Marier) has an English version of Marian vespers with accompaniments. You can download it online
    Thanked by 1igneus
  • igneusigneus
    Posts: 390
    @davido liturgical purist's rant: EF Vespers in the vernacular are not Vespers in the strict sense. A cute popular devotion, but no liturgy.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw Ben
  • The texts ffr are modified but otherwise are of the translation of the Holy House to Loreto approved for various places. It is different from the medieval feast.
  • In the Dioceses of England and Wales, September 24th is the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, classified as a Memorial. I believe there are specified Readings for the OF Mass, and probably for the Office as well, in books published in the UK, but I don't have them. The folks at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Wlasingham can help you with them.

    http://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Calendar/2016/Sep.shtml
  • For the OF in England & Wales (& The IoM) :- My Divine Office is too old to include this feast (shows Our Lady of Ransom). Universalis doesn't show Vespers this year, as it is Vespers I of the Sunday, but for morning prayer it shows nothing except the Common, except for the closing prayer. At Mass it gives: 1st rdg Gal 4:4-7 RP Lk 1:46-55 GA Hail Mary ... women. or/or... Gospel Jn 19:25-27, (all from the Common). The (rather long) Collect looks as if it might be proper, otherwise just from the Common BVM.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    When I looked for this Feast I could only find reference to Our Lady of Ransom, and for the Proper, the texts used by the Mercedians.
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    @davido liturgical purist's rant: EF Vespers in the vernacular are not Vespers in the strict sense. A cute popular devotion, but no liturgy.


    I'm not sure "cute" is the word I'd use... There certainly is merit to it. As long as people know it isn't liturgy.
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    it isn't liturgy.

    isn't official liturgy which fulfils a canonical requirement to recite the hours

  • ...isn't official liturgy which fulfils a canonical requirement ...
    I have to wonder how hard it would be to get permission.
  • By the way -

    The Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham will be celebrating its patronal feast this Sunday. Festivities actually begin with a parish banquet in the great hall of the adjacent chancery on Saturday evening. Then there will be a pontifical high mass at 11.15 on Sunday morning, and solemn second evensong with Bishop Lopes officiating at 4.00 in the afternoon, followed by a reception in the parish hall. Any who may be in the area are welcome to come.

    The lectionary, to answer Aaron's query, is as follows:

    1. The Lesson - Isaiah 7.10-14, 8.10 - Et adiecit Dominus loqui ad Achaz
    2. The Epistle - Galatians 4.4-7 - At ubi venit plenitudo temporis
    3. The Gospel - St Matthew 1.1-16, 18-23 - Liber generationes Jesu Christi filii David.

    (This being a solemnity, all three will be sung, as is our custom.)
    _____________________________________________________________________

    About several of the comments above -

    Not wishing to cast judgment pro- or con- about the EF rite, but I have more than difficulty, which is to say that I have immense rejection of the proposition that a translated EF rite could not be considered 'liturgy'. Of course, I do understand the parameters at play right now in this very thread, that since the EF has no official translation that enjoys official use, it cannot be considered 'liturgy' - for that reason, and relative to the rather arbitrarily subjective nature of these parameters.
    Liturgy, however, is an objective category of ritual forms which are not limited in use to us Catholics, nor, even, in use uniformly within our Catholic world. Nor is any given language a requisite factor in whether or not any certain ritual form is 'liturgy'. I have no problem at all referring to Lutheran or Episcopalian 'liturgy', for their habits of worship are liturgical in nature and follow historical Christian ritual patterns. It is a little disingenuous to say that a liturgy isn't a liturgy because it isn't in Latin, or isn't official. This is nonsense - and not just nonsense, but arrogant nonsense. Nonsense like unto saying that A Mid-summer Night's Dream isn't a 'play' if it is translated from its original English into French or Bulgarian, and hasn't been made 'official' by some competent entity.

    I have always been of the mind that the Church would have been far better served by an highly literate translation, with some revision here and there, of the pre-Vatican II rite than was the sad case of the Novus Ordo and the chaos to which it was subjected. Unfortunately, for many people (and, the NO itself!) the chaos came to be equated with the rite, not the hideous depravity of those men (and women!) who were chaotic.

    The point (which I may be obscuring!) being that it has been a sad development that many think that the only 'real' liturgy is Latin, and the corollary that a mere stamp of approval makes liturgy of this non-liturgy. This is lamentable and objectively illogical.
    Not only is it a proposition which could not be proven, it is a deplorable and thought-less judgment against the riches of which the English language is capable, as is evidenced not only in the Ordinariate Use and its precursors, but, as well, of more current usage. Speaking of the Ordinariate, we have, there, an excellent case in point. I have all my life worshipped with the wondrous language of the BCP and never doubted (indeed, knew quite fully) that this Use was liturgy, was worship, and was Catholic (though not without some, shall we say, 'embarrassing' locutions here and there). And, voila, all the Church, at last, proclaims that what yesterday was a 'Protestant Service' is today (purged of those embarrassing locutions) the peculiar use of a Catholic rite. Is it not a little ridiculous to think that a thing that is patently and obviously Catholic isn't 'liturgy'. What makes it liturgy? Is it so just because the Church approves of it? Or is so because it expresses what is unarguably Catholic in a 'liturgical' form? Is liturgy itself not an objective category which may be essentially Catholic or not Catholic in what it expresses? I'll answer my own question: yes, it is.

    And so, I'll have to disagree respectfully with Igneus (see his comment below), who would have it that 'official' is a pleonasm and that 'being "official" is a constitutive feature of liturgy'. While I understand his frame of reference, I also cannot but be aware that it is an highly subjective one which ignores what liturgy objectively is. People who say the EF office in English are engaged in liturgy - 'unofficial' though it may be.
    _______________________________________________________

    Incidentally, the most recent of two EF liturgies at which I have sung with or without an attendant schola was this morning. It was a sung requiem, celebrated by a Franciscan from Louisiana, with myself and the erudite gentleman who retained me as schola. I was enriched quite nicely by it, especially because I was intensely involved and sang some of the most beautiful chants in the repertory. However, I also felt a certain alienation due to the silent canon and other prayers, and by the sense that I was a mere observer of what was a matter entirely betwixt the priest and God - indeed, that everyone who wasn't the priest was, ultimately, irrelevant. The people sat stone faced throughout and likely had no idea at all what was happening. I'm thankful for the experience, which I did truly appreciate, but, oh!, my gratitude for Benedict's gift of the Ordinariate was amplified ten-fold. I should not, ever, wish to 'go back' to or re-embrace a mass at which my voice was not wanted, was (as I understand it from some who have commented here) actually frowned upon and, if necessary, audibly scolded into silence during the mass. No. This, too, as long as we are splitting hairs, is not liturgy - not in the fullest most replete sense, which inherently, 'constitutively', involves the action and interaction of all present.
  • igneusigneus
    Posts: 390
    Adam Wood: isn't official liturgy which fulfils a canonical requirement to recite the hours


    In the sense in which I use the term "liturgy", "official liturgy" is a pleonasm: being "official" is a constitutive feature of "liturgy".
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    People with no obligation to recite the hours can still celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours.
  • Just to note that I belatedly realised that Universalis includes the Ordinariate Calendar (for England), so it did give OF Evening Prayer for Our Lady of Walsingham.
  • Yes, but it would still fulfill the obligation. Tomjaw, see my comment above. Per Fr. Hunwicke.