We make our plans, and God makes His. It was God’s plan that our vising priest would have laryngitis for Septuagesima Sunday. Father sheepishly slinked into the Schola practice room before Mass and asked in a whisper if it would be okay if we did not sing that day. It was okay.
I will tell you our considerations, then tell you what we did for the low Mass.
The joyful seasons of Christmas and Epiphany being behind us, we will soon enter the penitential season of Lent. The 3-week season of Septuagesima bridges the gap between the Christmas season and Lent. We now leave behind the joyful Gloria, and the joyful word, Alleluia. The Gloria will be sung on Holy Thursday, and feast days, but the Alleluia will be strictly avoided until the Mass of the Paschal Vigil. So, of course, we will refrain from singing hymns that contain the word Alleluia.
Recall our rule of thumb that if the priest is wearing green, we will often sing Mass XI. There is another rule of thumb: If the priest is wearing purple, we will usually sing Mass XVII. But it would be premature to sing Mass XVII during Septuagesima because Mass XVII is to be used for Lent and Advent. The book that gives us much guidance regarding the Liturgy, the Liber Usualis, doesn’t give us an option for the commons, prescribing Mass XI. So, we have the interesting case where the priest is wearing purple, but had we sung, we would have sung Mass XI – and of course, we would have sung it without its Gloria. We would have paired Mass XVII with Credo I, as usual. But we didn’t sing the Mass. We did, however, sing hymns.
The hymns we choose during Septuagesima will generally have a penitential character, but we still have much to celebrate. So, as the processional we sang Immaculate Mary (with the Lourdes refrain) in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes, which feast we celebrated last week.
At the Offertory, again, we sang Stella Coeli Extirpavit. It is coming on two years since we first started singing it to ask Our Lady to preserve us from the current pestilence.
At the Communion, we sang Parce Domine, omitting the fourth verse owing to the specific reference to the fasting of Lent. We also sang the seasonal Compline Marian anthem, Ave Regina Coelorum.
We concluded with God of Mercy and Compassion, which has a certain penitential feel to it without being full-on Lenten.