How the Roman liturgy unveils the agony beneath Christ’s composure
From Passion Sunday to Palm Sunday, the Roman rite leads us into the suffering Heart of Christ.
From Passion Sunday to Palm Sunday, the Roman rite leads us into the suffering Heart of Christ.
Passiontide and the Psalms
During his Passion, Christ speaks little, whilst manifesting a composure and dignity under even the most unimaginable treatment. His silence is a veil, like those which cover the statues in Passiontide, hiding from us the thoughts and feelings which he experienced in the Passion.
But Christ is not just a historical figure, but a living God-Man; and the events of the Passion are not just events in the past, but living mysteries from which grace continues to flow. These mysteries are made present to us through the Church’s liturgy, in which the veil of silence is lifted.
While Christ speaks little, the Roman Liturgy speaks for him. It gives us not only the external events of his Passion, but reveals something the Gospels only hint at: a glimpse into the soul of Christ as he suffers.
These glimpses are chiefly mediated to us through the Psalms which are sung through every part of the ancient Roman rite. The liturgy doesn’t just tell us about Christ’s Passion—it places us inside it, and allows Christ himself to speak.
It is a commonplace of patristic and theological commentary that many parts of the psalms are written in persona Christi—that is, they express the thoughts, desires, sorrows, and triumphs of the Messias. Several times in the Gospels, he tells us that the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms were written of him. After the Resurrection, he interprets these same scriptures to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The Apostles, too, constantly explain themselves and Christ’s mysteries through the language of the psalms.
They are not just prophecies of his life: they give us a glimpse of the thoughts and feelings of the Sacred Heart itself.
In light of this, there is a very stark contrast between the traditional Roman rite and the Novus Ordo rite. In the traditional rite, the Psalms do not just appear once between the readings. They make up the majority of the propers (the variable parts of the Mass), and dominate the traditional Roman rite from the start to the finish. They are a crucial means by which the Church teaches us how to view the sacred mysteries of our religion and the person of Christ himself.
Through these psalm texts, the Church shows us the mystery hidden beneath the silence: the composure and the agony of the suffering God-Man. And nowhere is this more beautifully revealed than in the proper texts of the two Sundays of Passiontide: Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday.
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