'A Through-Composed Gloria'

One evening last week, Laura had been practicing singing, finding notes on the piano, and looking through files, preparing for her role as cantor that next Sunday.

Suddenly with a gleeful tone in her voice, she said, “Hey! I found a through-composed Gloria in an old Breaking Bread book!”

As soon as she said it, I just had to write it down. Other than myself, it seemed unlikely any other English-speaker in the world would have the slightest idea what she was talking about.

It occurred to me that the two of us speak an additional language these days, one we’d hardly known anything about a decade ago.

“I found a through-composed Gloria in an old Breaking Bread book.” To extract the meaning, some preface is required.

The two of us have become quite adept at the nomenclature or the vernacular of the English-speaking Catholic Church in the United States.

We’re pretty good at the slang too. And the jargon. And with some effort, the Latin.

Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have known the difference between a deacon and a dalmatic. Now I actually know what a thurible is, and a communion paten and a reliquary.

But back to that “through-composed Gloria in an old Breaking Bread book.”

When our pastor appointed her as cantor, as director of music, for the 11:30 a.m. Mass at St. Peter here in Greeley, Laura had some questions for him.

What would be his requirements? How many songs should be sung for communion? How many minutes long should the meditation song be? Nuts and bolts stuff.

One thing Father requested was . . . (drum roll) . . . a through-composed Gloria.

In a Catholic Mass, sometimes “The Gloria” is said; most often in a Sunday Mass, it is sung. When the prayer is said, it has no refrain, per se. It is said “straight through.”

For the sung version, composers have inserted a refrain to which the choir and the assembly have learned to return several times while The Gloria is being sung.

It was Father’s wish to have the words of “Glory to God in the Highest” be the same, whether sung or said.

Skittish about changing any copyrighted composition by leaving out the refrain, Laura had been looking for . . . (drum roll) . . . “a through-composed Gloria.”

When she found what she was looking for, she was joyous, elated, mostly because it would from that moment on be simple to adhere to the priest’s request in conducting The Gloria.

She found a through-composed Gloria in an old Breaking Bread book. Oh, one more elucidation: the hymnal we now use is called simply “Canticle.” The previous hymnal was “Breaking Bread,” hence the “old Breaking Bread book.”

Ready for more?

Some of these are pretty easy. Here’s one I heard some time ago:

“The baptistery sprang a leak and water got into the sacristy, but none of the vestments got wet.”

Don’t you just love it? The baptistery is the structure in which baptisms take place. It is, because it is dry at times and wet at others, a problematic piece of equipment. It leaks. Often.

Sometimes, water follows the floor under a wall and ends up in the sacristy. The sacristy is the room adjacent to the sanctuary; it’s there the clergy and the servers dress and prepare for Mass.

The vestments are the specialized clothes which are worn for Mass and for some other occasions. See? It’s fairly simply to talk Catholic.

Catholic misspeak

Here’s one gaffe you’ll hear quite often:
“No wonder there was confusion! She was in the wrong place on the altar!”

Obviously, to those sharp-eyed proofreaders among you, the person in question wasn’t “on the altar.”

The altar is a sacramental table situated in the sanctuary. We don’t “go up on the altar,” but we do “go up into the sanctuary.”

The sanctuary not only contains the altar, but in most churches, the tabernacle. The sanctuary is the raised room at one end of the nave. The nave is the large room that contains the pews and the kneelers. And the assembly.

Tabernacle. The word has commonality with the word “tavern,” but it’s not what you think. Its roots mean “tent.” In the Catholic idiom, the tabernacle is the ornate, lockable safe-deposit box, usually in gold, which contains the Blessed Sacrament.

The Blessed Sacrament is the unleavened bread that has been consecrated for communion.

Extra is retained in the tabernacle for use by Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion when they take communion to shut-ins and the hospitalized. The consecrated hosts are kept in a locked container to prevent sacrilegious use.

See? Not too difficult.

But, but . . . what’s an extraordinary minister? Why, I just happen to know. That’s a person who has been mandated, authorized, by the bishop to take the Eucharist out of the church.

Extraordinary? No it doesn’t mean anybody is particularly extraordinary. We’re all pretty much common, actually. But:

The “ordinary” is the priest or the deacon, the “ordained” minister. So a person authorized to shoulder some of his responsibilities is . . . extra-ordinary.

Oh, and Eucharist. In Greek it means gratitude or thankfulness. In English it comprises the consecrated bread and wine served in communion.

Here are more

A paten is a disc with a handle, held by an altar server to catch any possible crumb falling when a person receives the host. Host is another word for the bread.

A thurible is a censer or an incense boat. A dalmatic is a short outer garment with short, full sleeves worn by a deacon, bishop, abbot or a cardinal, under the chasuble. A chasuble is also called an alb. A reliquary is a device used to contain a relic . . .

This could go on forever? O.K., here’s one more:

The ambo

“The cantor mistakenly went to the lectern instead of the ambo to sing the psalm. The deacon was not amused.”

The ambo is a large, usually elevated structure from which the scriptures are read and the Gospel is pronounced.

The ambo is used by the lectors, the cantor, deacons and priests, and is reserved for reading the Bible. Only the Bible is read from this structure.

The lectern, or podium, is a separate, smaller, less imposing structure used for announcements and other business. We don’t get the two mixed up, or we risk the ire of the deacon. This would not be good.

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Word of the week: Sanatorium. It’s from the Latin, sanare, to heal, or sanatorius, giving health. It really means a place where the sick are taken to be healed – but it has come to imply treatment of mental illness only.

Next week’s word: Paraclete.