Thursday, April 4, 2013

Low Sunday: Quasimodo Day


The octave of Easter, more commonly known as Easter week, reaches its ultimate on Low Sunday.  Now, most of us lay folk probably think of the term “low” Sunday as reference to the markedly “lower” number of people in the congregation on the Sunday following Easter.  But the term has been in existence for a very long time—even during ages when congregations did not lapse and it was socially unacceptable not to attend church services.  It’s not clear where the term originates, but one plausible explanation is that when the Octave of Easter was observed with every one of the eight days being a feast day, each day lessened in festal splendor.  Thus, by the eighth day, the Sunday following Easter, the feast was at its lowest energy and no doubt its lowest rations.  Hence the name Low Sunday was coined. 

In 2000, when Pope John Paul II canonized Sr. Faustina Kowalska for her vision of Divine Mercy, the second Sunday of Easter became known as Divine Mercy Sunday in the Roman Catholic Church.  There is a certain liturgical logic that a celebration of Divine Mercy that springs from the redemption of sins upon Christ’s resurrection should immediately follow the feast of the resurrection.  In some Western Christian faiths, the second Sunday of Easter is also the feast of St. Thomas, for the Gospel of the day is the story of Thomas’ skepticism.  Divine Mercy again reprises its implication when Jesus comments to Thomas, “Happy are they who have not seen yet believe.”

You may be wondering what all this has to do with this blog’s current theme of music in worship.  I’m getting to that right now.

Prior to its recasting as Divine Mercy Sunday, and ignoring the assumptions of meanings and interpretations of the “Low” moniker, the second Sunday of Easter is also known Quasimodo Sunday.  (Of course!  It is to honor the hunchbacked bell-ringer in Victor Hugo’s famous book.  Okay, maybe not,  but read on for the connection. ) Like Gaudete Sunday in Advent and Laetare Sunday in Lent, Quasimodo Sunday takes its name from the incipit (the first word; in this case the compounding of the first two words) of the introit for the day. 


In ancient traditions, the Great Vigil of Easter was a time of mass baptism.  Neophytes to Christianity would prepare during Lent and receive the sacrament of Holy Baptism during the Easter Vigil Mass.  They would be given white gowns that they would wear during the Feast of Easter (the octave was treated as if it were a single day) and finally be allowed to set them aside on the eighth day, being fully welcomed into the communion.  On this day, they would take Holy Communion for the first time.   And so, the Second Sunday of Easter is known by yet another name: Dominica in Albis Depositis (Sunday of the depositing of the albs).  The introit for this Sunday speaks directly to the newly baptized drawing from Jesus’ instruction, “and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” –Matthew 18:3

So on the Second Sunday of Easter, the newly baptized are like newborn infants and receive the Divine Mercy of Christ upon his resurrection and emulating Jesus who leaves his robes neatly folded in the tomb, they discard their baptismal garb and join in the feast on the last day.  Quasimodo, Divine Mercy, Dominica in Albis, Low Sunday.  While we no longer sing Mass and have little to no cultural recollection of an introit other than through Masses performed in concerts, the concept and words are not lost in our worship.  Listen to the collect for the day on Sunday.  You will hear reference to being reborn and allusion to Divine Mercy in the words.  (Or you can click on this link to the Book of Common Prayer and look for the collect for the Second Sunday of Easter…)

As for celebrating the hunchback in Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the deformed infant was left on the steps of the cathedral on Quasimodo Sunday, so the archdeacon who found and cared for him named the child after the day, saying the babe was “an almost” (another interpretation of the term Quasimodo).

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