For the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass in Ordinary Form, is a sprinkling rite included?
Also, our pastor is planning to sing the Christmas Proclamation. Is there any other special part of this liturgy that we as the musicians should be including (i.e. sequences or anything else?).
If you refer to the Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year, (Msgr. Peter Elliott, Ignatius Press 2002) numbers 52 and 53 specify it sung from the ambo, by deacon, cantor or reader. Unless the deacon is already wearing a dalmatic, he wears a white cope... All stand during the proclamation.
Otherwise, (according to #53) it specifies (in the US) that it may follow the greeting and introduction to the Mass, and it then takes place of the Penitential Rite. It can be used at any or all Christmas masses.
I believe the Sprinkling Rite may replace the Penitential Rite at almost any Mass.
There is a beautiful Sequence, though one verse of it is perceived by many as as anti-Semitic.
If your priest is up for it, on a Holy Day of such solemnity as Christmas the dialogues, (pax vobiscum..., verbum domini... etc,) and the preface really ought to be sung, and the EP.
We have always had either the cantor or the Deacon chant the Proclamation. Surely not the priest? We do it before the Entrance Hymn, Adestes Fideles, just b/c that's the way it was being done when I came, and no one has ever questioned it. Should it be placed somewhere else more correctly? I think our new Bishop would be open to that.
Donna
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