Thursday 28th March 2024

Home » Frontpage » Currently Reading:

The Eucharistic Watch Of Holy Thursday Night

March 24, 2016 Frontpage No Comments

Image result for the eucharist

By JAMES MONTI

The interval from eventide on Holy Thursday to the afternoon of Holy Saturday is like no other in the liturgical year — a time without the celebration of Mass. It is different for a reason. For these are the hours of the Sacred Passion, death, and burial of our God and Redeemer.
As the Augustinian liturgist Fr. Giovanni Michele Cavalieri (+1757) observed, “…the Church herself is totally occupied in mysterious actions, which are related to the Passion, death, and burial of Christ” (Opera omnia liturgica, 1758, vol. 4, p. 166).
And it all begins with a solemn procession — the transfer of the Blessed Sacrament at the conclusion of Holy Thursday Mass from the high altar to the altar of reposition, a place shimmering with an effulgence of candlelight and suffused with the mingled fragrances of spring blossoms, beeswax, and incense. It is a place that commands silence and awe.
In a 1995 homily Pope St. John Paul II explained how the eucharistic procession of Holy Thursday differs significantly from the festive procession marking the Solemnity of Corpus Christi:
“This Eucharistic procession has a characteristic note: we pause beside Christ as the events of his Passion begin . . . on Holy Thursday we accompany Jesus on the way that leads him to the terrible hours of the Passion. . . . In the Polish tradition the place of reposition for the Eucharist after the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper is called ‘the dark chapel,’ because popular piety links it to the memory of the prison where our Lord Jesus spent the night between Thursday and Friday, a night certainly not of repose, but rather a further stage of physical and spiritual suffering” (homily, June 15, 1995, L’Osserva-
tore Romano, June 21, 1995, pp. 1-2).
Even before succeeding Pope John Paul in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI years earlier as a cardinal had spoken of the Holy Thursday procession to the Repository as an imitation of Christ’s journey from the Last Supper to Gethsemane, “into the night of the Cross, the night of the Tomb” (Journey Towards Easter, Crossroad, 1987, p. 96).
At a general audience during Holy Week of 2011 (April 20), Pope Benedict noted that the eucharistic vigil on this night is “in memory of the Lord’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane,” when He experienced “immense anguish at the closeness of death.”
Citing Christ’s admonition to His apostles in Gethsemane, “. . . remain here, and watch with me” (Matt. 26:38), the Pontiff reflected upon how this vigil summons us to overcome our indifference to God and to the battle between good and evil:
“Nocturnal adoration of Holy Thursday, watching with the Lord, must be the very moment to make us reflect on the somnolence of the disciples, of the defenders of Jesus, of the Apostles, of us who do not see, who do not wish to see the whole force of evil nor do we wish to enter his passion for goodness, for the presence of God in the world, for the love of our neighbor and of God” (L’Osservatore Romano, April 27, 2011, p. 14).
The practice of praying in the Holy Thursday Repository is at least nine centuries old, first mentioned in a missal of Rieux, France (c. 1100). The idea of keeping a watch in the Repository seems to have arisen very soon afterward, with a 12th-century liturgical book of Milan, Italy, stating that on Holy Thursday the archbishop would instruct the subdeacons to guard with vigilance the reserved sacrament (Ordo of Beroldus).
By the 15th century, the practice of a continual eucharistic watch from Holy Thursday to the morning of Good Friday had become an established custom in Spain, with priests (Vich, 1463) or monks (Benedictines of Valladolid) as the watchers. In the early 1520s the papal master of ceremonies Paride de Grassis (+1528) enjoined this observance.
In the constitutions that the Spanish archbishop St. Juan de Ribera (+1611) a year before his death composed for the chapel of Valencia’s Royal College and Seminary of Corpus Christi, a school founded by him, he directed that at least six clerics were to be present throughout the eucharistic vigil, which he divided into five watches (from the end of Mass to 6:00 p.m., 6:00 to 10:00 p.m., 10:00 to 2:00 a.m., 2:00 to 6:00 a.m., and 6:00 a.m. to the Holy Communion rite of Good Friday), with a change of watchers every four hours.
The more difficult late night watches were assigned to “the young and the strong,” with the “aged and the weak” given the less challenging daytime watches (Constitutions, chapter 34).
At Corpus Christi College the watchers recited continually the Psalms, a custom also observed at the Spanish cathedrals of Toledo (1530) and Palencia (1567). A 1794 ceremonial compiled for the Congregation of St. Jerome (the Hieronymites) in Portugal directs the monks keeping watch to meditate upon “the mysteries of the Sacred Passion of Christ” and “the institution of the Most Holy Sacrament” (Fr. Manoel da Graca, Ceremonial e ordinario monastico, Coimbra, Portugal, vol. 2, 1794, p. 62).
The custom of visiting the Repositories of several different churches on Holy Thursday was already in evidence in Spain by the mid-15th century. A chaplain of King Alonso V recorded in his diary that on this night in 1459 King Alonso himself and his queen Dona Juana managed to visit every church in the city of Valencia.
Although the chaplain does not state the specific reason for these visits, a subsequent entry in his diary for 1469, recording that Pope Paul II had granted for the cathedral of Valencia an indulgence to whoever visited the church during the interval from when the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the “moniment” (a Catalan word meaning “sepulcher,” i.e., the Repository) on Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday, leaves little doubt that the royal visits on Holy Thursday a decade earlier concerned the solemn reservation of the Eucharist in the city’s churches (Fr. Jaime Villanueva, Viage literario a las Iglesias de Espana, vol. 1, Madrid, 1803, p. 149).
Similarly, a chronicle concerning the Spanish lord Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, the Count of Castile, records that on Holy Thursday of 1464, “…after they [the clergy] enclosed the Body of our Lord God” in the Repository at the cathedral of Jaen, this nobleman “came to the monumento (Repository) and saw how it [the Eucharist] was enclosed”; then, after dinner, he and his retinue visited all the churches and monasteries of Jaen (Relacion de los Hechos, in Memorial historico Espanol, vol. 8, Madrid, 1855, pp. 170-171).
The chronicle of Miguel Lucas also mentions that the count arranged for six torches to be kept burning continually on wooden candle-stands before the monumento. The custom of adorning the Repository with a multitude of candles had arisen by the 12th century, when it is mentioned in a will of Ager, Spain (a provision of four torches). The 1567 missal of Palencia speaks of “very many candles” for the monumento. St. Juan de Ribera directed that every candle-stand which Corpus Christi College possessed was to be employed for the adornment of the college’s Repository.

Utmost Grandeur

Archival documents and liturgical books from Spain, Portugal and Italy dating from the late 15th to the 19th centuries contain many amazing descriptions of how the Holy Thursday repositories would be adorned. The following rubrics regarding the Repository are from the afore-cited 1794 ceremonial of the Hieronymites in Portugal:
“The said chapel shall be prepared with the utmost cleanliness and grandeur which shall be possible. Within, it shall have for the top of the altar a throne gilt or covered with white silk, over which shall be placed a canopy with a support also of white silk, the most precious that there can be, adorned with valances, fringes, and galloons of gold. Below the canopy, and atop the throne, shall be placed an urn or coffer locked with a key, and fabricated with total perfection, gold or silver on the outside and lined on the inside with golden white silk, and garnished with galloons of gold, and over the floor of it shall be placed a corporal.
“The throne shall have lights of white wax, as many as there can be, and there shall never be less than thirty, and it shall be adorned with flowers, natural and artificial. The altar shall have a white frontal, the most precious that shall be possible, and on the gradine shall be placed six candlesticks. . . . The floor shall be covered with carpets, or green cloths, and on it shall be placed some large candle-stands with candles of white wax, which shall burn throughout the time of the exposition” (Da Graca, Ceremonial, vol. 2, pp. 49-50).
The eucharistic vigil of Holy Thursday, when fittingly observed and properly understood, serves as an ideal preparation for the immense mysteries of Good Friday. Rather than closing the Repository at 11:00 p.m. as is often done, pastors really should consider keeping their churches open at least until midnight.
In fact, the current rubrics do allow eucharistic adoration to continue into Good Friday (provided that after midnight this is done “without external solemnity” — Circular Letter Concerning the Preparation and Celebration of the Easter Feasts, 1988, n. 56).
While writing this essay I learned that a parish in Norwalk, Conn., St. Mary’s Church, will be extending the eucharistic watch to 8:00 a.m. on Good Friday morning. Let us hope that many other parishes will do the same.

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Abortion Advocates No Longer Consider It “A Necessary Evil,” They Celebrate Killing Babies

Last week, Kamala Harris became the first vice president in U.S. history to make a public visit to an abortion clinic. Though the Democratic party’s support for abortion is nothing new, Harris’ Planned Parenthood appearance does illustrate how that support has become a flagrant celebration of abortion as a public and personal good, essential to both “freedom” and to “healthcare.” At the appearance, Harris proclaimed,  It is only right and fair that people have access…Continue Reading

Wisconsin Supreme Court says Catholic charity group cannot claim religious tax exemption

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a major Catholic charity group’s activities were not “primarily” religious under state law, stripping the group of a key tax break and ordering it to pay into the state unemployment system. Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) last year argued that the state had improperly removed its designation as a religious organization.  The charity filed a lawsuit after the state said it did not qualify to be considered as an organization…Continue Reading

Walgreens and CVS Will Start Selling Abortion Pills That Kill Babies

The two largest pharmacies in America will start selling abortion pills this month that end the lives of unborn children by starting them to death. Walgreens and CVS will both sell the abortion pills despite the fact that they kill a developing human being and have killed at least dozens of women and injured tens of thousands more. They plan to initially roll out abortion drug sales in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, California…Continue Reading

Cardinal Burke announces novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for ‘crises of our age’

VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — Raymond Cardinal Burke has announced the start of a global, nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, calling on Catholics to beseech Mary’s intercession on the Church and the world in the face of the “crises of our age.” In a new endeavour published online over the weekend, Cardinal Burke announced a novena beginning in March, and culminating on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.

Texas attorney general targets Catholic nonprofit, alleges it facilitates illegal immigration

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 21, 2024 / 21:15 pm Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shut down a Catholic nonprofit organization in El Paso based on allegations that the group may be facilitating illegal immigration, harboring immigrants who entered the country illegally, and engaging in human smuggling.  Paxton filed a lawsuit against the nonprofit Annunciation House, which has operated in the state for nearly 50 years. The lawsuit asks the District Court of El Paso…Continue Reading

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)