Propers for Children's Lectionary?
  • rogue63
    Posts: 410
    Mr. Tucker has burned my conscience these past few weeks with his zinging articles on NLM about whether we will be "...singing the Roman Rite....or a ritual of our own invention?" That is, we should be singing the propers so integral to the Roman Rite.

    The school where I teach uses the Children's Lectionary (not that I chose it or that I like it) for the weekly school Mass on Thursdays. I sit now with a copy of said Lectionary, and lo, I find no sight of any Introit or Gradual or Offertory or anything like it. My practice has been to simply choose a theologically sound hymn for the usual four places (and that's pretty hard to do from Ritualsong), but what is my alternative? Of course we know Sunday Propers are taken care of in the Graduale, but what does one do for a Thursday school Mass? Do propers, in fact, exist at all for this occasion? Where can I find them?
  • Aristotle EsguerraAristotle Esguerra
    Posts: 1,185
    The way I understand it, for most of the liturgical year the chanted propers for the preceding Sunday are sung for the rest of the week unless (1) there is a stated proper substitution in the Graduale Romanum for a particular day or (2) there's a feast for that day. In the first case, one must make certain they're in Year I or II of the weekday cycle. In the second case, the propers for the feast take precedence.

    By the way, every day in Lent according to the ordinary form has its own set of proper chants in the Graduale Romanum. Daunting!

    Also, since the Graduale Romanum contains scriptural citations, if I can find a responsorial psalm setting corresponding to an antiphon, I'm inclined to use it at Offertory or Communion. Note that the psalm numbering schema in the Graduale differs from that found in RitualSong (Greek/Septuagint vs. Hebrew)

    You may also consider the Graduale Simplex, which contains simpler chants. Its English equivalent, By Flowing Waters, is a viable option. In both cases there is a pick-and-choose element that I, for example, am not so keen on. But the Simplex has the full blessing for use in the Ordinary Form.
  • Aristotle EsguerraAristotle Esguerra
    Posts: 1,185
    Richard Rice's Simple Choral Gradual (PDF) may also be of use here.
  • Paul F. Ford
    Posts: 857
    Good questions, Dallas.

    The first can be answered by the observation that lectionaries are not missals or graduals. Lectionaries contain only the chants between the readings.

    Aristotle is correct. “The weeks unfold under the influence of the Sundays that begin them. They belong either to a particular liturgical season or to the Thirty-four Weeks of Ordinary Time” (P. Jounel, in The Church at Prayer IV: The Liturgy and Time [Collegeville: Liturgical, 1986], 27). So, when there is no weekday solemnity, feast, or obligatory memorial, we sing the Sunday introit, pray more deeply the collects of the Sunday, and sing the communion, which echoes the Sunday gospel.
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