When is the Proper Offertory Chant Sung during a Priest Ordination?
  • WJA
    Posts: 237
    As noted on another thread, our schola is singing for a priest ordination next month.

    I'm working with the Music Director at the Cathedral. We were talking about the offertory chant, and he said the offertory works a bit differently in an ordination Mass and that there might not be a place for the offertory chant.

    But in the ritual Mass for ordinations, there is a designated offertory chant, and in Dr. Ford's musical choice template for priest ordinations, there is a place for the offertory. But I am uncertain about when you sing it.

    I don't have the ordination rite handy, but from what I've read:

    1. Priest is vested and hands anointed w/ proper antiphon and psalm sung.
    2. Priest and Bishop wash hands.
    3. Gifts are brought to the altar.
    4. Bishop presents paten and chalice to new priest.
    5. Kiss of Peace w/ proper antiphon and psalm sung.

    So it seems to me that you would sing the offertory chant at 3, when the gifts are being brought up, but be sure to end it before the presentation of the paten and chalice to the priest.

    Does that make sense?
  • Paul F. Ford
    Posts: 857
    Justin,

    You ask a great question. I just reread the rite to be sure of the advice I am about to give you (I'll send you the rite off-list). Although the Sicut in Holocausto could be sung beginning at 3,it actually is completed after 5 and after the Creed, if the day requires the Creed.

    I'd recommend an instrumental improvisation on the opening phrases of the Sicut and reserve the singing for the preparation of the altar and the incensing of the gifts, altar, cross, bishop, ordained, and assembly.

    The tradition of singing the Sicut at the ordination of deacons, priests, and bishops during the preparation of the gifts comes from solemn monastic profession. To me there is nothing more moving than the surrender to God at a monk’s vow-taking, symbolized by the monk’s singing three times on ascending pitches : Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam. Et non confundas me ab expectatione mea (“Uphold me, Lord, according to your word and I shall live; let not my hope be put to shame”), repeated each time by the monks.

    What does the drama of the Suscipe mean? In pagan Rome, the paterfamilias, the head of the household, was the one before whose feet the newborn child of the household, freeborn or slave, was placed. If the head decided to be the susceptor by picking up the child to hand it to its mother, then the child could be nursed and brought up. If he chose not to lift up the child, the child was left to die.

    Christians who spoke Latin immediately gave to the Abba of Jesus and our Abba the title of Susceptor. By singing the Suscipe, the monk, who had just signed his life away, is begging his heavenly Father to pick him up, to sustain him, to confirm the incredible act of hope that religious profession is.

    In many monasteries, the next thing sung is the offertory chant from Daniel 3:40: Sicut in holocausto arietum, et taurorum, et sicut in millibus agnorum pinguium, sic fiat sacrificium nostrum in conspectu tuo hodie, ut placeat tibi, quoniam non est confusio confidentibus in te (“As though it were holocausts of rams and bullocks, or thousands of fat lambs, so let our sacrifice be in your presence today as we follow you unreservedly; for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame”)—a wonderful response to the self-offering just made!
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