E SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

THE CEREMONIES OF HIGH MASS. 157
a substitute for those lights which are prescribed by the
Church s ritual. 1 Six candles are lighted at High Mass,
and seven at a High Mass celebrated by a Bishop. The
origin of this custom takes us back to the ninth century
after Christ. We cannot do better than quote a passage
from a most interesting and instructive book on the
Ceremonies of Holy Week published in 1902. In
speaking of the service of the Three Lessons on Good
Friday, the author refers (p. 4) to a time in the early
Church when the Chief Pontiff and his attendants made
their solemn entry into the sanctuary for High Mass.
"In the sacristy," writes Father Thurston, "near the
entrance of the Lateran Basilica, the Pontiff assumed
the sacred vestments. There he took his place in the
procession to the altar, being supported on his right by
his archdeacon and on his left by the second deacon,
and preceded by the subdeacons, one of whom, who was
inferior in grade to the seven regionary 2 subdeacons,
swung a smoking censer. At the head of the procession
walked the seven regionary acolytes bearing lighted
candles. . . . The seven candles of the acolytes, which
were eventually ranged in a row on or before the altar,
explain in the clearest way the origin of the seven
candles in a Pontifical High Mass, and through an
obvious differentiation, the origin of the six candles on
the altar in a High Mass which is not pontifical."
1 To the question
" Utrum
lux electrica adhiberi possit in
Ecclesiis," it was answered by the Congregation of Rites, "Ad
cultum, negative: ad depellendas autem tenebras ecclesiasque
splendidius illuminandas, affirmative ; cauto tamen, ne modus
speciem prae se ferat theatralem." (June 4, 1895.)
a
Pope St. Fabian in the third century divided Rome into seven
"
ecclesiastical regions." Each region had a deacon and subdeacon
of its own, with acolytes under them. These clerics were
called
"
regionaries ;
"
sequentes, "supernumeraries."
others of the same grade were called