If you've been blessed with the grace of a liturgical interest then a visit to Rome's (Catholic) Armenican rite parish is a must. This parish is located in the fashionable Via Veneto neighborhood (the Church of San Nicola da Tolentino). Armenican Catholics have had this Rome parish as their own since the 1880s when PopeLeo XIII gave them the property. Armenian seminarians live in the attached collegio. In the photos is a diaconal ordination from Sunday. The ordaining prelate was His Beatitude Nerses Bedros XIX, the Catholic Patriarch of Armenians.Needless to say, the rite was breathtaking.
7 comments:
Rome is a very big "heart of the church"!
What a beautiful rite, so reverent, so spiritual...
We must learn all about the great liturgical traditions of the Church. I think that one rite explains the other and all together are the song of the angels.
The great popes were right in not latinize the universal church.
Unkil Logrese
Are those Dominican fathers intermixed with the Armenians, or a coincidental Armenian vestment that looks similar to the OP habit?
Yes, Dominican friars came and were invited to sit in choir.
Excelent!!!
I wish to be in Rome!
Nichán Eduardo Guiridlian Guarino
Argentina
Oh wonderful pictures! Did everyone notice the red courtains on the presbytery arch? This is an ancient costume of the church (the Armenian being one of the very few rites to continue that tradition)in which the said courtains would be drawn at certain parts of the mass: including the part of the consecration of the bread and wine into the blood and flesh of Christ -thus is it called "the sacred mystery" and would have happened behind the courtains. Today most people think it as atrocious to hide this act!!! (as I've often heard and read on other blogs...) but there is something romantic and sublime about the intention - everything sacred is usually veiled: wether the virgin bride about to be married, the chalice when not in use... etc. and veiling the most sacred mystery seems like a reverent way to separate the sacred from the mundane. This is the same function the iconostasis of the Greek/Orthodox church, where the sacred act takes place out of view in the sanctuary.
God Bless.
I do not understand... is this an exorcism or no?
The curtain (veil) of the sanctuary remains open for the Consecration. It is closed at the beginning of the Liturgy for the preparation of the gifts, and sometimes later for the communion of the celebrant.
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