By JAMES MONTI
Although the sacred season of Lent begins with a decided emphasis upon repentance, a theme that will remain a major priority over the forty days that follow, the subject of the Passion, which will overshadow all else in the last two weeks before Easter, is ever present as a strong undercurrent from Ash Wednesday onward.
On this upcoming Second Sunday of Lent the Church will present to us, as she has for centuries, the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor. This event has long been understood as our Lord’s way of preparing and fortifying the Apostles Peter, James, and John for “the scandal of the cross,” for the mystery of His Passion, for it is they who would later witness at close quarters His agony in Gethsemane.
But one can also see in the Transfiguration a mysterious prefiguration of Calvary. For on Calvary, as on Mount Tabor, our Lord was glorified — “Now is the Son of man glorified. . . .” (John 13:31). And just as our Lord’s appearance in glory on Tabor was a theophany, a manifestation of His divinity, so too, His appearance on Golgotha, ruthlessly wounded and bloodstained for our sins, was likewise a theophany, for it was and is the ultimate manifestation and revelation of His divine love.
On Tabor Christ appeared in the company of Moses and Elijah, thereby revealing Himself as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets; so too on Calvary Christ Crucified is the fulfillment of the sacrifices and prophecies of the Old Testament.
And just as from a cloud overshadowing Tabor the voice of the Father was heard to declare, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matt. 17:5), so also when on Good Friday darkness overshadowed Golgotha, in the quaking of the Earth at Christ’s death could be heard a wordless reaffirmation from God the Father that this indeed was His Son in whose sacrifice He was well pleased — a reaffirmation to which the centurion and his companions on Calvary gave voice: “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matt. 27:54).
In one of his homilies for Lent, the Spanish Augustinian priest St. Alonso de Orozco (+1591), ponders not only the stunning contrast between Mount Tabor and the mount of Calvary but also the ways by which Calvary is “the mountain of the Lord” foretold by Isaiah:
“ ‘And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left’ (Luke 23:33). Come, my brothers, let us ascend the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He shall teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths, Isaiah once said (cf. Isaiah 2:3). Truly this is the mountain of the Lord Jesus Christ, upon which He arrives that transfigured He may show His glory. On Mount Tabor His face shone like the sun; His clothes were made white as snow.
“But on this mountain, the sun is darkened seeing the face of its Creator disfigured by spittle and blood; we see Him not having beauty or comeliness, nor have we esteemed Him. His clothes have been made not white but red, yes, colored red by His Precious Blood. His house is the Holy Cross, in which the true Jacob has waged war against Satan the prince of darkness, when by His own death He conquered our death. Hanging on the cross He shall teach us His ways, poverty, humility, obedience, endurance, and patience. . . . Calvary is that mountain of which David [spoke]: the mountain of God, the mighty mountain . . . the mountain upon which it has well pleased God to dwell” (Declamationes quadragesimales, tam pro dominicis diebus quam pro quartis et sextis feriis, Salamanca, 1576, fol. 249r).
Passion Sunday
The point of transition in the themes of the lenten season is the Fifth Sunday of Lent, known for generations as Passion Sunday, the name it still bears in the liturgical books of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. By the twelfth century this Sunday was being marked by the singing of the ancient hymn of the Holy Cross, Vexilla regis, a work composed by the monk St. Venantius Fortunatus (+c. 600) to celebrate the arrival of a relic of the True Cross at the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Poitiers, France, in 569.
By the fifteenth century there had arisen in Spain a unique and dramatic rite to mark the return of the Vexilla Regis for Passiontide. Known as the “Ceremony of the Banner” (Cerimonia del pendon), this observance is first alluded to in a book of accounts for the cathedral of Leon, which in an entry dated March 28, 1450 speaks of a “black standard of the Vexilla Regis” made from silken cloth (José Sanchez Herrero, Las Diocesis del reino de Leon: siglos 14 y 15, Leon Centro de Estudios e Investigacion “San Isidoro,” Leon, 1978, p. 290). The existence of the rite at the cathedral in fifteenth-century Seville is attested by two bulls granting indulgences dating from 1468 and 1478, which speak of the practice as celebrated “from an old and laudable custom” (“ex antiqua et laudabili consuetudine”) (José Sanchez Herrero, La Semana Santa de Sevilla, Silex Ediciones, Madrid, 2003, p. 19).
In Palencia the rite is described in both a customary of the cathedral dating from 1550 (Sanchez Herrero, Las Diocesis del reino de Leon, pp. 289-290) and in a missal of the diocese published in 1567 (Missale Pallantinum, Palencia, 1567, fol. 399v). The rite also appeared in the Spanish cities of Oviedo, Zamora, Saragossa, Granada, and Guadix (Charlotte Stern, The Medieval Theater in Castile, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton, 1996, p. 209). A detailed diary of liturgical rites at the cathedral of Huesca for the year 1786 also tells of the ceremony, in this case carried out by altar boys (Fr. Vicente Novella Dominguez, Ceremonial de la Santa Iglesia de Huesca, ms., Huesca, 1786, vol. 2, pp. 5-7).
In 16th-century Palencia, the “Ceremony of the Banner” was carried out five times during Passiontide: on the eve of Passion Sunday, on Passion Sunday itself, on the eve of Palm Sunday, on Palm Sunday itself, and on Wednesday of Holy Week (the order of the verses of the Vexilla regis as sung in Palencia differed somewhat from the usual order).
The rite as prescribed in the Palencia missal of 1567, which takes place at vespers, begins as the responsory following the final psalm of the office is sung. The bishop sets out from the choir in procession with twelve canons (priests of the cathedral) divided into two choirs of six; all thirteen are vested in black choir cloaks with their heads covered.
Arriving before the door of the sacristy, the bishop takes into his hands a black silk banner that bears at the center a red cross. Slowly raising the banner, he sings the words, “Vexilla regis prodeunt” (“The standards of the King go forth”). The canons thereupon all kneel before the banner and reply, “Fulget crucis mysterium” (“The mystery of the cross shines”).
Upon completing the first verse of the hymn, the canons stand and proceed with the bishop to a spot before the choir, as the cathedral choir sings the second verse. The canons then sing the third verse, this time without kneeling.
The choir takes the next verse as the bishop and the canons proceed to the altar, the bishop ascending to the top step with the banner and kneeling, while the canons kneel at the bottom step and sing the fifth verse, “Beauteous and shining tree,/ adorned with the purple of the King, chosen from worthy stock/ to touch such holy members.”
The bishop and canons remain where they are during the next verse, and then, for the verse, “Hail, O Cross, our only hope” (also sung by the choir), the canons prostate themselves on the altar steps, “silently meditating with him [the bishop] upon the divine mysteries” as the bishop somberly waves the banner to and fro. The canons remain prostrate for the rest of the hymn and do not rise until the singing of the Magnificat, at which point they rise and with the bishop return in procession to the choir. The banner remains at the top altar step until the completion of vespers.
At the end of the rubrics for the ceremony, the missal urges that parish churches should “imitate their mother” (i.e., the cathedral church) by carrying out this observance in a manner fitted to their own means.
With its dramatic actions the “Ceremony of the Banner” presents the Vexilla regis as a battle hymn, a call to Christian combat and an invitation to join Christ in the holy battle of His Sacred Passion, His battle against Satan, sin, and death. As we continue our lenten pilgrimage toward Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week, let us abide on Calvary, saying with St. Peter what he said of Mount Tabor, “Lord, it is well that we are here” (Matt. 17:4).
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