The issuance of a series of universally promulgated liturgical books for the Roman Rite following the Council of Trent over the years from 1568 to 1614 was intended to bring about a deepened fidelity to the reverent and fitting celebration of the sacred liturgy, most especially by means of highly detailed and carefully ordered rubrics. Such rubrics left little to chance: the insertion of the text known as the Ritus Servandus in Celebratione Missae (“Rite to be Observed in the Celebration of Mass”) in every Roman Missal from 1570 to 1962 gave the priest step-by-step instructions to follow from when he vested before Mass to when he returned to the sacristy and unvested afterward.
The Ritus Servandus was moreover supplemented by additional instructions that together with the former were printed in the introductory portion of the missal. These included directions on what to do in the event that something went amiss in the celebration of the Mass — “defects,” as they were called. Every sort of mistake, inadvertent omission, or unforeseen event was addressed.
Yet like all bodies of legislation, the rubrics of the post-Trent liturgical books were in need of proper interpretation, which was not always self-evident. From the 1590s onward, the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued official responses to questions about the interpretation of the rubrics addressed to them by bishops from around the world. By the year 1900, the congregation had issued over 4,000 of these decisions.
With both parish priests and bishops in need of a helping hand in the implementation of the rubrics and in sifting through the growing corpus of clarifications from the congregation, the 1600s saw the emergence of liturgical manuals, how-to commentaries written by clerical scholars who had studied deeply all the relevant texts and knew well how to teach the ars celebrandi, the art of celebrating the sacred liturgy.
Among the most important and widely circulated of these was a work entitled, Thesaurus Sacrorum Rituum seu Commentaria in Rubricas Missalis et Breviarii Romani (“Thesaurus of the Sacred Rites, or, Commentaries on the Rubrics of the Roman Missal and Breviary”), written and first published in 1628 by Barnabite liturgist Fr. Bartolommeo Gavanti (1569–1638). This treatise was subsequently published in a number of editions over the century following its initial appearance, and was significantly augmented when in 1736 the Theatine liturgist Fr. Gaetano Maria Merati (1668–1744) commenced the publication of a four-volume edition containing extensive additional explanatory notes of his own.
In sharp contrast to the tremendous and well-deserved prominence achieved by the treatise of Fr. Gavanti is a liturgical commentary on the rubrics of the Mass published in Rome in 1655 with the title Rubricae Missalis Romani Commentariis Illustratae (“The Rubrics of the Roman Missal Elucidated with Commentaries”), authored by Theatine Fr. Paolo Maria Quarti (ca. 1615–1664), a native of the southeastern Italian city of Andria.
Remarkably, scarcely any biographical information is available regarding this liturgical scholar, yet we are told in one source that he was “a man of austere living,” which certainly suggests he was a cleric of noteworthy piety commensurate with the piety quite evident throughout his commentary on the Mass.
Fr. Quarti provides a straightforward arrangement in his treatise by first quoting a paragraph or more from the rubrics of the Missale Romanum, followed by what he calls a “literal” explanation of the preceding rubric, expounding how it is to be interpreted on the practical level for carrying out the external action of the sacred liturgy properly.
After these quite detailed literal explanations, Fr. Quarti includes a considerably shorter “mystical” explanation of the same rubric, what he describes as the hidden spiritual meaning and symbolism of the external liturgical action. He then concludes his discussion of each rubric with a lengthy treatment of all the dubia, i.e., the uncertainties that could arise regarding the implementation of the rubric under consideration.
What I would like to focus upon for readers of The Wanderer are the beautiful mystical explanations that Fr. Quarti provides in Rubricae Missalis Romani Commentariis Illustratae, explanations that rely heavily upon the great allegorical interpretations of the sacred rites penned centuries earlier by medieval liturgists Pope Innocent III and William Durandus of Mende, yet also bearing the mark of Fr. Quarti’s own liturgical piety.
In the first of his mystical reflections, Fr. Quarti likens the difference in how the Church celebrates simple weekdays from how she celebrates Sundays and feast days to the distinction between the active life and the contemplative life, as well as the difference between life on earth and life in heaven. Thus, the ferial days correspond to our working actively like Martha (Luke 10:38–42), engaged in the things of the present life, whereas in the celebration of Sundays and other feast days we partake of the better part enjoyed by Martha’s sister Mary, the contemplative life and the state of glory enjoyed by the blessed beholding the face of God in the life to come.
In this context, the vigils that precede feast days can be seen as imaging what we do in this life in the way of mortifications and self-denial to prepare for and attain the destination of heaven (p. 63).
Fr. Quarti explains the liturgical day of Saturday as allegorically represented by the Blessed Virgin Mary. Just as God on the seventh day rested from the work of creation, so too in the work of redemption wrought by the Incarnation, Christ rested in the womb of our Lady. Moreover, just as Saturday is, as it were, a doorway to the Sunday that follows it, the day of the week that symbolizes eternal life, so too the Blessed Virgin Mary is “the door of heaven, and the bright gate of light” who by her intercession helps us to enter heaven (p. 70).
In full keeping with the medieval allegorical interpretations of the parts of the Mass, Fr. Quarti likens the approach of the priest to the altar and the recitation of the Introit to Christ’s entrance into the world via His Incarnation, with the verses of the Introit corresponding to the cries of the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets awaiting the Messiah (p. 106). The priest (when he is entering to celebrate a Low Mass) carries the chalice before him, in front of his breast, just as Christ in the course of His public ministry kept the chalice of His upcoming Passion ever before His eyes (Matt. 26:39) and was filled with zeal in His breast to drink of it (Luke 12:50). The priest, when opening the Missal to begin the Mass, can be likened to Christ the Lamb who alone is “worthy to open the scroll and break its seals” (Rev. 5:2) (p. 227). The altar represents not only the table of the Last Supper but the mountain of Calvary and the cross itself, as well as the Holy Sepulcher (p. 183).
The singing of the Gloria denotes the Nativity of Christ (pp. 106–107). The reading of the Epistle represents the preaching of St. John the Baptist, whereas the Gradual denotes the spirit of repentance that his preaching inspired, and the Alleluia testifies to the joy of souls raised up from spiritual death by repentance. The Gospel both in the literal sense and in the mystical sense represents the preaching of Christ (p. 117).
Fr. Quarti repeats the classical interpretation of the priest’s incensation of the altar at the Offertory as corresponding to the incensation performed by an angel in Revelation (Rev. 8:3–5) which, in turn, mirrors what Christ does as our mediator before the Father, offering the incense of prayer in the golden thurible of His immaculate Body with the fire of charity that burns within Him (p. 252).
Following the hushed, silent recitation of the Offertory prayers that signal symbolically the approach of the Lord’s Passion, the Sanctus denotes the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The repeated Signs of the Cross during the Roman Canon denote the stages of the Passion of Christ that the recitation of the Canon mystically represents (p. 124). The bow of his head with which the priest concludes the prayer for the faithful departed in the Canon recalls how Christ bowed His head when He breathed His last upon the cross (p. 329). The Holy Communion that follows bespeaks the joy of the Resurrection. The priest’s blessing at the conclusion of the Mass recalls Christ blessing the apostles at the time of His Ascension into heaven, and the reading of the Prologue of the Gospel of St. John corresponds to the preaching of the Gospel by the apostles (p. 126).
Mass could only be celebrated during the day, in the morning between dawn and midday (according to the rubrics in force up until the mid-20th century), signifying that the Victim who is offered in the Mass is Christ who is “the brightness of the eternal light” and who said of Himself, “I must work the works of him who sent me, whilst it is day” (John 9:4 — Douay-Rheims version) (p. 135). The liturgical colors of white and red denote “the realm of immortality,” while those of green, violet, and black represent respectively hope, mortification, and the remembrance of death (pp. 169–170).
The different volumes of speech used by the priest in reciting the Mass, sometimes fully aloud, at other times whispered, reflect how in the course of His Passion Christ sometimes spoke and prayed quite audibly, at other times silently (p. 147). The priest in standing at the altar images Christ on the cross, extending his arms just as Christ extended His arms to be nailed to the cross, whereas the priest’s genuflections recall the descent of Christ from heaven down to earth in the Incarnation (p. 162).
These are just some of the mystical explanations that Fr. Quarti offers. In fact, as he himself explains, there are even passages in his mainly literal explanations of the rubrics where he finds it necessary to draw upon the mystical interpretation of the sacred liturgy. For, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, nothing that concerns its proper and fitting celebration can ever remain purely on a functional level. It is an act of supreme love offered by the Son of God infinitely transcending any earthly function.
The wholesale eradication of the mystical understanding of the Mass following the Second Vatican Council has denuded the liturgy of so much of its mystery and beauty. But providentially, our young priests and our young laypeople are rediscovering this timeless spiritual vision of the Mass. “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him” (Lam. 3:25).
