Photo: Fr Carl Reid
BLOGS | JAN. 23, 2019
New Gradual Brings ‘Prayer Book English’ to the Mass
Catholic parishes that celebrate Masses in the Ordinary Form can boost their experience of sacral English or congregational chant with the Ordinariate’s new St. Peter Gradual from Newman House Press.
by Peter Jesserer Smith
In 2009, Benedict XVI declared the Anglican patrimony was a “treasure to be shared” throughout the Universal Church and set up three ordinariates (akin to dioceses) directly under the pope himself, to provide a permanent home for this reunited English and Catholic liturgy and tradition in the Latin Church. Ten years later, Benedict XVI’s vision in Anglicanorum Coetibus that the ordinariate would provide a further source of enrichment for Catholic worship in English continues to advance with the publication of The St. Peter Gradual by Fr. Peter Stravinskas’s Newman House Press.
The St. Peter Gradual contains the minor propers for all Sundays, Solemnities, and Feasts of the Lord in modern musical notation. These chants are certain biblical verses that are prayed at different points of the Mass, such as the Introit (Entrance), Gradual (Psalm), Alleluia (or Tract in Lent), Offertory and the Communion, when using Divine Worship: The Missal. But the gradual can also enrich parishes that celebrate the ordinary form of the Roman rite and would welcome either more sacral English in the celebration of the Mass or plainchant settings that their congregations can sing without needing extensive musical training.
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