What is it? I'd be interested in reading up on this, since I haven't heard of it before. Why is it called Quasi Modo? How is it traditionally celebrated?

And Quasimodo, Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame, got his name because he was found on Quasimodo Sunday.

If you put your back into it, it will all be over before you know it.

Just curious. Is this particular Sunday designation for the EF? For us, it is the Second Sunday of Easter - Low Sunday - Divine Mercy Sunday. After all the hard work for last week, we are all taking it easy next Sunday. Nothing special or difficult.

What with Didymus' doubt and the Twister of Satanic Smoke circling the globe, I thought programming Gibbon's "O Lord, increase my faith" seemed appropriate for DM/2nd Easter tomorrow.

We will be making a rare exception and singing a hymn, O Sons And Daughters (O filii et filiae), in place of the Offertory. Along with All Glory Laud And Honor for Palm Sunday, Jesus Christ Is Risen Today for Easter, Come Holy Ghost for Pentecost, and To Jesus Christ Our Sovereign King for Christ The King, this is one of few hymns that are actually fairly specific to the day (other than Christmas carols) and that I can rely on the people to sing. The rest of the year, i can be pretty sure they participate more fully through active listening to the Offertory proper.

For the OF, Low Sunday may not be an appropriate name, since the day is the Octave of Easter. Liturgically it still keeps some of the marks of Easter, singing Ite missa est, alleluia, alleluia, and the sequence, Victimae paschali laudes. There are two wonderful motets we usually sing on this day: Victoria, O decus apostolicum, a motet referring to doubting Thomas, the gospel of the day, and Gallus, Stetit Jesus, referring to Jesus's appearance on the eighth day, with a splendid set of alleluias in mixed tripe meters.

For the OF, Low Sunday may not be an appropriate name, since the day is the Octave of Easter

...? So the EF doesn't have the octave of Easter? I thought that was a very, very old tradition

The Sunday after Easter was always the octave day of Easter, but the Easter octave proper seems to have been counted from Holy Saturday (which was celebrated in the morning, so was not thought of as the Mass of Easter Sunday). Thus in the old breviary, there is a rubric on Easter Saturday, which says "the proper office of the octave comes to a close after None." Thus Low Sunday begins the normal liturgical conventions of the Easter season: In the Mass, the Ite missa est is no longer followed by two alleluias, and the sequence, which had been sung on all the days of the Easter week, is no longer sung.

With the reformed calendar of the OF, the Easter octave explicitly includes this Sunday, prescribing Ite missa est, aleluia, alleluia. The Graduale Romanum of 1974 includes a rubric on Easter Monday which says the sequence may be sung throughout the octave, but it does not print the sequence or give further reference to it on the subsequent days of the octave. And since the Sunday is now part of the octave, it seems that this was the intent of the 1974 book. The Gregorian Missal, which does not give the week days of the octave, gives a reference on the the Second Sunday of Easter to the sequence, referring back to Easter Sunday, but the reference no longer expresses it as an option, simply stating that it is sung there. I did not pick up on that until the publiation of the Gregorian Missal. The third edition of the Roman Missal does not mention it, since the chants following the lessons are not included in the missal, but rather in the lectionary.

One interpretation of Dr. Mahrt's description could be this: When the Second Sunday was included in, or perhaps one might say restored to, the octave in the OF, the immediate inclination was to make it almost indistinguishable from Easter Sunday. A laudable impulse but later the idea relaxed a bit. Some aspects, such as the double alleluia and the special sections of the Roman Canon, are retained for the octave, but the idea of sustaining the sequence throughout the week has been somewhat rethought. Does this sound plausible?

For what it's worth: I sang the Ex form with my choir at St. John Cantius, Chicago, in the morning of Quasimodo Sunday, and the Schola sang the sequence; then, for my day job evening Mass at 5:30 pm,(another parish) we sang the Mass (also Ex form) without the Sequence. I'm confused, but still faithful.

As it was Divine Mercy Sunday, is anyone aware of any modern motets written to commemorate the day? Pretty ones, I mean. Also, when Divine Mercy Sunday was created, were new propers included in the missal? Obviously, the graduals wouldn't contain them.

We did Introit by Richard Rice. For Divine Mercy Sunday we chanted the Chaplet by Aristotle after the Mass.