Yet Another Traditional Feast Day Lost
For centuries, until Pius XII started his amputation of liturgical traditions in the 1950’s, each May 3 the Church celebrated with great solemnity and historical detail the discovery and unearthing of the True Cross. The feast was of the highest rank in the pre-1955 calendar, which seems appropriate: it even outranked an ordinary Sunday during the Easter season. Today is one of those Sundays.
We can never measure the losses to faith and holy praxis that have been caused by the gradual shrinkage of the liturgy, both the Mass and the Divine Office. But we laity still can observe the now-suppressed feasts like this one, thanks to the Internet. I recommend highly at least a reading of the lessons from the Matins prayer for this date, under any Divine Office version from 1954 or earlier, even if only to appreciate the manner in which the whole Church once celebrated its own history, which of course is the history of our salvation. Go to http://DivinumOfficium.com or use the iOS app Breviarium Romanum and look for it. Just because popes have suppressed these feast days from the calendar, and thus from the canonical duties of clergy and religious, doesn’t mean we have to let them disappear.
Surrexit Dominus Vere, Alleluia!
In Ministerium Maiorum 