If you have ever shown up early to church and found yourself quietly paging through your hand missal—let’s say, a Saint Andrew Daily Missal reprint from 1945—you might have stumbled across a section of Mass formularies that may be unfamiliar owing to the rarity of their use.
Some of these will be identified as Votive Masses, like the Mass of the Passion of Our Lord, Mass for the Removal of Schism, Mass for the Forgiveness of Sins, or Mass for a Happy Death. How I wish our priests would use these votive Masses more often!
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Still others may be called “Feasts Kept in Some Religious Congregations and in Some Places” or “Local Feasts,” such as St. Joan of Arc on May 30, the Most Pure Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, SS. John Fisher and Thomas More on July 9, St. Peter Claver on September 9, Saints John de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, and Companions on September 26, or, intriguingly, Feast of the Holy Relics Preserved in the Churches of the Diocese on November 5. St. John Nepomucene on May 16, St. Rita of Cascia on May 22, the Commemoration of All Holy Popes on July 3 or July 4 (dates vary), and Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal on November 27 would be further examples.
Older missals may have still more exotic Masses, such as the Mass of the Holy Face of Jesus, the Mass of the Sacred Lance and Nails, the Mass of the Five Holy Wounds. Some of these could be used by any priest, while others would require special permission. The missal was once filled with these profound “devotional” Masses, which (needless to say) the rationalist progressivist liturgists hated. “So medieval! So pietistic! So unbiblical! So…”
All one has to do is study these Masses prayerfully to see how foolish and harmful is this ideological rejection. They are, in fact, profoundly scriptural, profoundly Catholic—but in the vein of the Council of Trent, in the vein of liturgical-sacramental mysticism. Perhaps this is why they were rejected.
At this time of the liturgical year, when Holy Mother Church is celebrating, at the behest of the Lord Jesus Himself, the feast of the Most Holy Body of Christ (Corpus Christi), we find one such unique Mass that deserves to be revived in our times: the Feast of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, observed on the Thursday within the octave of the Sacred Heart—that is, the penultimate day of the octave.
